EGU Scientific Divisions

Looking for answers towards the stars: stone tools and nuclides unveil the earliest solid evidence of humans in Europe

Anna Katsigera April 18, 2024

This false-color image from three of NASA's Great Observatories provides one example of a star that died in a fiery supernova blast. Called Cassiopeia A, this supernova remnant is located 10,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/CXC/SA

When stars explode, supernova-style, the explosion sets off streams of high energy particles across the universe, mainly protons and alpha particles, that after millions of years reach us here on Earth. Secondary cosmic rays pass through our bodies and almost everything around us, and they penetrate a few meters into the ground where they interact with atoms in soil and rock. This produces new iso ...[Read More]

Turning adversity into opportunity: mapping plastic pollution in rivers

Jakub Stepanovic April 17, 2024

In July 2021, the Benelux area, Germany, and France experienced heavy rainfall followed by mass flooding, causing widespread damage. Along the vast quantities of plastic swept along the riverbanks, Rahel Hauk, a researcher from Wageningen University, conducted fieldwork to assess the impact of the flood event on plastic deposition. Amidst the debris, Hauk and her colleagues noticed a large volume ...[Read More]

Past ice and future predictions – scanning and drilling the changing Antarctic ice

Maria Scheel April 17, 2024

In front of the blue EGU press conference background, Olaf Eisen (left), Robert Larter (middle) and Emma Pearce (right) are engaged in discussion.

Fig. 1: Olaf Eisen (AWI, Germany), Robert Larter (British Antarctic Survey) and Emma Pearce (British Antarctic Survey) during the #EGU24 press conference “Unveiling Antarctica’s secrets: new research brings us one step closer to predicting the future of the icy continent” (Photo credit: Jakub Stepanovic).

Did you know that some of the scientists of each General Assembly get invited to a press conference to face a group of curious journalists? I did not – but as press assistant for the #EGU24, I had the unique chance to attend the press conference “Unveiling Antarctica’s secrets: new research brings us one step closer to predicting the future of the icy continent”. Prominent scientists (Fig.1) ...[Read More]

Soil bacteria that hunt like a wolfpack? Myxobacteria and their role in the food web

Maria Scheel April 16, 2024

A photo of a wolf in the middle and four microscopic images of colourful bacterial cultures around it.

Fig. 1 The resemblance between bacteria and a hunting wolf might not be obvious, but come take a dive into the weird ecology of Myxobacteria (Collage with photo credit Garcia et al. 2010 and Julien Riedel via pexels.com).

Picture this: bacteria that can slime their way around the soil, finding their prey, circling it, closing in on it and lysing it (or making their cell pop), just to feed on their prey. It sounds like a far stretch from a wolf to a bacteria, but even other soil predators, the comparably huge nematode worms ( up to 100 times bigger!), are afraid of these bacterial “wolves”. I went to the Soil System ...[Read More]