Artificial intelligence (AI), such as machine learning with neural networks, opens up new possibilities in many areas such as science, technology and medicine, but also raises questions of ethics. Do the benefits or risks outweigh the risks?
AI is already simplifying many aspects of our lives, but when it starts making decisions
A great deal of energy could be saved if turbines and combustion engines operated at higher temperatures than they currently do. Ceramic high-temperature materials make this possible. Martin Jansen, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, has been conducting research into just such a new material for 20 years. It is now ready for the market.
We live at the very bottom, on a small, cool island where solid matter is possible
Our Yearbook 2016 showcases the research carried out at the Max Planck Institutes. We selected a few reports to illustrate the variety and diversity of topics and projects.
low-frequency gravitational waves, which are emitted by, e. g., binary supermassive black
Together with an Indian Partner Group of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Bhola Ram Gurjar is analyzing the pollution in Indian megacities and how badly it is affecting the health of city dwellers.
due to Air Pollution), a mathematical model that estimates how many additional lives
Max Planck researchers are searching for vulnerabilities in the life cycle of the malaria parasite.
They change hosts over the course of their lives and completely alter their way of
In the early hours of October 23, 2011, ROSAT was engulfed in the waves of the Indian Ocean. This was the end of a success story that is unparalleled in German space exploration research. The satellite, developed and built by a team led by Joachim Trümper from the Garchingbased Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, not only found more than 150,000 new cosmic X-ray sources, it also revolutionized astronomy.
The live transmission from Cape Canaveral was broadcast on a large screen.
The making of a quantum movie
© Thorsten Naeser The black curtain goes up: As if on a stage, below us lies
Cyber-physical systems are in strong demand for their ability to increase road traffic safety and optimize electricity consumption from renewable sources. They link vehicles to sensors that monitor traffic and order the car to brake if a dangerous situation arises, for example. Or they distribute electricity from multiple power plants to consumers as efficiently as possible. Rupak Majumdar, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Kaiserslautern, develops mathematical methods for ensuring the reliability of these networked systems.
The camera now focuses on a man wearing a black sports coat over a light blue shirt
Celebrations are held on the 12th of February each year to commemorate the birthday of Charles Darwin, the 19th-century British naturalist, who achieved major insights into the process of evolution thereby completely revolutionising traditional concepts of life on earth and human’s position in it. For Diethard Tautz and Paul Rainey of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön and Ralf Sommer of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Darwin laid the foundations for evolutionary science, a field of research, which no longer solely considers the past but, instead, increasingly looks to the future.
supernatural creator came at a time when religion still played a central role in the lives
The making of a quantum movie
© Thorsten Naeser The black curtain goes up: As if on a stage, below us lies
