News - FWIR
Press releases:
Ältester Permafrostboden von Sibirien entdeckt
Spuren(elemente) kosmischer Explosionen
Sternenstaub vom Meeresgrund: Forscher*innen finden Supernova-Spuren in Sedimenten aus der Tiefsee
Exotischer Besucher aus dem All
Stardust in the Antarctic
Chemische Kriminaltechnik in der Archäologie
Older press releases
- The 2016 HZDR Awards ceremony (May 2017)
- Discovery of a time-resolved supernova signal in Earth’s microfossils (August 2016)
- Supernovae Showered Earth with Radioactive Debris (April 2016)
Other news:
Current press coverage:
- Im Tor zur Unterwelt: Der Batagaika-Krater in Sibirien erlaubt einen Blick in mehr als 600 000 Jahre Klimageschichte des Permafrostbodens(German only, July 2021)
- Exploding stars may have assaulted ancient Earth (July 2021)
ECHo-Team at DREAMS: f.l.t.r.: Felix Wiescher (JGU Mainz), Oliver Forstner (FSU Jena & HI Jena), Christoph Düllmann (GSI Darmstadt, JGU Mainz, HI Mainz), Holger Dorrer (JGU Mainz), Klaus Wendt (JGU Mainz), Silke Merchel & Georg Rugel (HZDR, HI Freiberg) and Tom Kieck (JGU Mainz) Photo: Silke Merchel
November 2017 - The ECHo (Electron Capture in Holmium Experiment) team performs experiments at DREAMS.
Development of AMS at DREAMS for experimental determination of the ratio 163Ho/166mHo in ECHo samples. The long-lived 166mHo (t1/2=1200 a) is an unwanted by-product of the 163Ho (t1/2=4570 a) production, which is reduced to ultra-low levels (~10-9) after sophisticated mass separation. For a background-free measurement of the 163Ho spectrum in the ECHo metallic magnetic calorimeters the absence of 166mHo is critical.
Lisa LUNA, U Potsdam
Photo: Silke Merchel
June 2017 - DREAMS user Lisa Luna (U Potsam; now: NewClimate Institute for Climate Policy and Global Sustainability, Berlin) receives the graduation award (1.000 Euro) of the university of Potsdam 2017. She graduated in geosciences with her MSc work "A glacial chronology and cosmogenic nuclide cross calibration from the central southern Andean Plateau (Puna, 24°S)“. The university of Potsdam gives this yearly award to persons who show a high potential for scienctific work and further qualification. The work was performed under the supervision of Bodo Bookhagen, Institute of Earth and Environmental Science. Further information (in German only) can be found here: "Alumni des Monats 06/2017 - Lisa Luna ".
BMBF Verbundprojekt: f.l.t.r.: Andreas Scharf (IBC, HZDR), Jenny Feige (TU Berlin), Hans Hofsäß & Felipe Bregolin (U Göttingen), Silke Merchel & Georg Rugel (HIF, HZDR), Andreas Gärtner (Senckenberg Dresden). Photo: Silke Merchel
January 2017 - Meeting of project partners for BMBF-Förderung „Erforschung kondensierter Materie“ - Entwicklung einer effizienten Hochstromionenquelle für Untersuchungen von Mikrometeoriten mit Beschleunigermassenspektrometrie (Project part 1 (U Göttingen); Project part 2 (TU Berlin) at the Ion Beam Centre (IBC)
Screenshot of Elsevier Highlight 2016 © Elsevier
Dezember 2016 - Treasure in ice core waste: Elsevier promotes our Open-Access-Paper in Results in Physics by making it a "Highlight".
Original publication (Microarticle): L. Zipf, S. Merchel, P. Bohleber, G. Rugel, A. Scharf, Exploring ice core drilling chips from a cold Alpine glacier for cosmogenic radionuclide (10Be) analysis, Results in Physics 6 (2016) 78-79.
Posterpreis 2016
Photo: Silke Merchel
October 2016 - "Self-praise? - Never mind!" We are really proud about our second place in the poster competition at the "Archäometrie und Denkmalpflege" meeting in Göttingen for our German poster "Bestimmung langlebiger Radionuklide mittels Beschleunigermassenspektrometrie (AMS) für archäometrische Fragestellungen".
kompilation supernova erde TEM Tandem
Photo: NASA/CXC/SAO//TUM
August 2016 - The first PNAS paper with DREAMS-data is published:
More information can be found in the common press release "Discovery of a time-resolved supernova signal in Earth’s microfossils".
Rock fall Namibia
Photo: Silke Merchel
April 2016 - Size does matter! ;-)
Succesful sampling of big boulders from a rock fall in Namibia.
Photo: NASA, ESA, R. Sankrit and W. Blair (Johns Hopkins University) / CC BY 3.0
April 2016 - The first Nature paper with DREAMS-data is published:
A. Wallner, J. Feige, N. Kinoshita, M. Paul, L.K. Fifield, R. Golser, M. Honda, U. Linnemann, H. Matsuzaki, S. Merchel, G. Rugel, S.G. Tims, P. Steier, T. Yamagata, S.R. Winkler, Recent near-Earth supernovae probed by global deposition of interstellar radioactive 60Fe, Nature 532 (2016) 69-72.
A.L. Melott has been so excited about our research results and of those of our colleagues Breitschwerdt et al. that he decided to summarize both Nature papers in his publication "Stellar astrophysics: Supernovae in the neighbourhood". Or as we say here: A supernova seldom comes alone.
You can read more on this in the press release.
Bhim Kali boulder on top of sediment deposits near Pokhara in Nepal.
Photo: C. Andermann, GFZ.
December 2015 - The first Science paper with DREAMS-data is published:
W. Schwanghart, A. Bernhardt, A. Stolle, P. Hoelzmann, B.R. Adhikari, C. Andermann, S. Tofelde, S. Merchel, G. Rugel, M. Fort, O. Korup, Repeated catastrophic valley infill following medieval earthquakes in the Nepal Himalaya, Science Express.
A press conference at the AGU Fall meeting introduced our paper and the one of Kargel et al. (Science Express) to the public. Instant notice was taken e.g. by Nature News.
Thanks to our coauthors for sampling this big guy and trusting DREAMS to determine a 10Be exposure age as low as 330 years!
October 2015 - DREAMS-User Dr. Jenny Feige (VERA, U Vienna; now TU Berlin) receives the "Klaus Tschira Preis für verständliche Wissenschaft" for her German paper "Astronomie unter dem Meer" (astronomy under the sea).
Dissertation Stefan Pavetich
Photo: Silke Merchel
October 2015 - Stefan Pavetich succesfully defends his PhD thesis "Determination of non-routine radionuclides by medium-energy accelerator mass spectrometry" at the TU Dresden - Congratulations, Dr. Pavetich! And best wishes for your Post-Doc at ANU!
Jenny Feige Dissertation Award
Photo: Silke Merchel
September 2015 - DREAMS-User Dr. Jenny Feige (VERA, U Vienna; now TU Berlin) receives the dissertation award of the division nuclear chemistry of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh) for her work "Supernova-Produced Radionuclides in Deep-Sea Sediments Measured with AMS“. Prof. Christoph Düllmann hands the award over.
Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften
Photos: Silke Merchel, Stephan Floss, Jana Grämer, Tina Schulz
July 2015 - Team "Ion beam Analytics" brings light to the "Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften" (Researchers’ Night)...
Team building activity 2015
Photo: Silke Merchel
June 2015 - Team building activity (HIF-Group IBA) in "Saxon Switzerland" (with guest from Switzerland and IBC-colleague)
January 2015 - Georg Rugel publishes with colleagues from Canberra, Wien, Garching, Jerusalem and Darmstadt in Nature Communications about "Abundance of live 244Pu in deep-sea reservoirs on Earth points to rarity of actinide nucleosynthesis".
Fieldwork in Namibia
Photo: Mandy Hofmann
January 2015 - Our DFG-project "Evolution of the western Namibian drainage systems since Eocene times – a multi-methodical approach" together with Senckenberg Naturhistorische Sammlungen Dresden starts with taking samples in Namibia.
ANSTO and VERA colleagues at DREAMS
Photo: Silke Merchel
November/December 2014 - Knowledge-transfer: ANSTO- and VERA-colleagues Mike Hotchkis (2. from left), Peter Steier (2. from right) and Stephan Winkler (right) help us to develop actinides-AMS at DREAMS.
Anton Wallner (ANU), Gunther Korschinek (TUM) and Michaela Fröhlich (ANU) at DREAMS. Photos: Silke Merchel
October 2014 - The HIAF scientists Anton Wallner (left) and Michaela Fröhlich (right) from the ANU in Canberra (DAAD project AUGEAS) help us again to perform heavy element mass spectrometry experiments and meet members of the User Selection Panel (Gunther Korschinek, TUM (middle) of the ion beam center.
Malin Lüdicke and DREAMS. Photos: Silke Merchel
September 2014 - Our trainee, Malin Lüdicke (TU Dresden), learned how to do 10Be sample preparation, but also re-designed DREAMS.
Super-SIMS Housing Photo: HZDR/Oliver Killig
July 2014 - Report (in German) about the Super-SIMS in the HZDR-Forschungsmagazin "entdeckt" - Ionen auf der Überholspur (picture by Oliver Killig).
Guided tour at the IBC
Photo: Silke Merchel
Mai 2014 - Hundreds of visitors took the chance at the Tag des offenen Labors (Open day) to go on a guided tour led by the ion beam analytics group of HIF.
April 2014 - Our paper about the didicated ion source for volatiles is published.
S. Pavetich, S. Akhmadaliev, M. Arnold, G. Aumaître, D. Bourlès, J. Buchriegler, R. Golser, K. Keddadouche, M. Martschini, S. Merchel, G. Rugel, P. Steier, Interlaboratory study of the ion source memory effect in 36Cl accelerator mass spectrometry, Nucl. Instr. and Meth. in Phys. Res. B Nucl. Instr. and Meth. in Phys. Res. B 329 (2014) 22–29.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nimb.2014.02.130
Screenshot of Wiedenbeck et al. paper's published by GGR © GGR
April 2014 - Our review paper reaches "Number One" of "Most accessed papers throughout 2013" of Geostandards and Geoanalytical Research (GGR). Our paper has achieved the highest download statistics (currently > 1400) ever for GGR.
M. Wiedenbeck, R. Bugoi, M.J.M. Duke, T. Dunai, J. Enzweiler, M. Horan, K.P. Jochum, K. Linge, J. Košler, S. Merchel, L. Morales, L. Nasdala, R. Stalder, P. Sylvester, U. Weis, A. Zoubir, Critical Review of Analytical Developments since 2010, Geostandards and Geoanalytical Research 36 (2012) 337-398.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-908X.2012.00218.x
Adjusting the correct height for SIMS. Photo: Silke Merchel
February 2014 - As the Super-SIMS-source has now its own "home", the installation starts by adjusting its height to the accelerator.
Arrival Super-SIMS-Source
Photo: Silke Merchel, René Ziegenrücker, FWGA
December 2013 - Arrival of the CAMECA IMS 7f-Auto - our new ion source for the Super-SIMS project.
ANU @ HZDR
Photo: Silke Merchel
September 2013 - We perform our first heavy element mass spectrometry experiments together with HIAF-scientists from Canberra (DAAD-project AUGEAS) at DREAMS.
Poster award Darmstadt
Photo: Silke Merchel
September 2013 - We are proud to annouce that René has received a poster award! He presented our poster entitled "High-Speed PIXE – schnelle Multielementanalyse mit Ionenstrahlen" (R. Ziegenrücker, J. Buchriegler, D. Hanf, J. Gutzmer, S. Ihle, S. Merchel, F. Munnik, A.D. Renno, G. Rugel, O. Scharf) at the annual meeting of the nuclear chemistry division, which took place at Darmstadt as part of the GDCh-Wissenschaftsforum.
Photo: Silke Merchel
August 2013 - "First stone laying" of the Super-SIMS House-in-House.
DREAMS @ ANU
Photo: Silke Merchel
May 2013 - DREAMS scientists "learn" heavy element mass spectrometry at the HIAF @ ANU, Canberra (DAAD project AUGEAS).
First HS-PIXE "picture" Photo: Silke Merchel
18th December 2012 - First "element picture" taken at the HS-PIXE-Beamline.
Lisa Michel and Rebecca Schmidt
Photo: Silke Merchel
September 2012 - The HIF trainees within the TU Dresden project "Lehrer studiert Unternehmen" (Lisa Michel and Rebecca Schmidt) are preparing AMS samples from manganese nodules.
Maurice Arnold
Photo: Silke Merchel
September 2012 - The DFG supports our bilateral Networking (FRALAMS) with ASTER, Aix-en-Provence, France: Maurice Arnold @ DREAMS.
Gabbro Super-SIMS
Photo: Silke Merchel
28th August 2012 - Installation of the 6.4 tons heavy Gabbro plate for Super-SIMS experiment.
Dominique Brising
Photo: Silke Merchel
August 2012 - First HIF trainee in the IBA group: Dominique Brising (TUBAF).
Arrival of Super-SIMS source
Photo: Silke Merchel
SIMS moves from Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrums GFZ in Potsdam to HZDR in Dresden
Photo: GFZ / Elisabeth Gantz
9th May 2012 - Arrival of Super-SIMS ion source.
Press coverage:
- Nanowerk News Nanotechnology Research and General News10.05.2012Tons of equipment for nanograms of science
- HZDR Press release 09.05.2012
March 2012 - First HIF trainee within the TU Dresden project "Lehrer studiert Unternehmen": Andreas Rieseler