4.8.2025
Office closed! This past Monday, the entire staff of the Dean’s Office, the HGSFP, and the Student Secretariat set off to explore the physics surrounding the Königstuhl. A team outing that not only gave us exciting insights into two extraordinary institutes but also offered the chance to meet outside the usual office routine.
We began at the Haus der Astronomie – a galaxy cast in concrete on the grounds of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. Klaus Tschira certainly didn’t hold back when he had this spiraling educational building constructed around a planetarium. And of course, there’s a black hole here – in the form of a tiny sticker placed on the backrest of a seat, right at the center of the building.
From there, and in about the same time it took us to ride Bus 39 from Bismarckplatz to the summit of the Königstuhl, Magdalena Vukojevic took us to the edge of the universe. A fascinating journey through time and space, past neighboring planets, through star clusters and galaxies.
Next stop: the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics. What we had marveled at in the planetarium now became tangible through experiments – or almost, at least. Renate Hubele showed us the wide range of current research: from well-aged experimental setups (read: cable chaos) to fascinating forests of lenses on optical tables, all the way to large-scale devices like the Cryogenic Storage Ring. The CSR is a globally unique storage ring that can be cooled close to absolute zero thanks to sophisticated cryogenic technology. It allows ions to be stored for minutes in a virtually interference-free environment – ideal for precise experiments with particle collisions. Particularly impressive: the CSR control room, with its multitude of monitors – a place that wouldn’t look out of place in a space mission!
Also worth mentioning: the rich botany surrounding the MPIK. Wolfgang Gentner, who brought the institute up the mountain in 1958 (there was no space left down in Heidelberg for a huge accelerator – or maybe, nobody wanted such a radioactive monster within the city walls?), turned necessity into a virtue and created a beautiful park. Today, it houses a veritable arboretum, with exotic species ranging from Lebanon cedar to giant sequoias!
And the ancient Romans? They entered the picture when we learned about the XENON experiment. Located deep beneath the Gran Sasso massif, this experiment searches for traces of dark matter – more precisely, for so-called WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles). However, experimental setup like this one requires extremely “clean” material: metal that is free from radioactive contamination. Since the above-ground atomic tests of the 20th century, that’s hard to come by. The solution? Ancient nails and fittings from Roman galleys – recovered from the seafloor and recycled for modern particle physics. Archaeology meets high-energy physics: a remarkable example of interdisciplinary upcycling.
And although the XENON experiment has yet to detect dark matter, every step along the way yields new insights. In the spirit of a charming take-home message for us: “If after a few failures you start to fail in a different way, it means you have made progress.”
What remains? A day full of wonder, great conversations, and – last but not least – the feeling of having grown closer as a team.
A heartfelt thank-you to Markus Pössel, Carolin Liefke, Magdalena Vukojevic, and Renate Hubele for the many exciting insights!
JS
