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Four people are talking to each other in front of a window. © Felix Schmale​/​TU Dortmund
Planetarium show

“Our Exotic Universe” Visualizes Astro Research from the Ruhr Region

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Photo of a building under a sky with stars, a galaxy and northern lights. © SFB1491
Scientists from the RAPP Center have collaborated with the team at Bochum Planetarium to develop the show “Our Exotic Universe,” which features images from their work.
To mark its tenth anniversary, the Ruhr Astroparticle and Plasma Physics (RAPP) Center of the University Alliance Ruhr presents its research with a new, impressive show at the Bochum Planetarium. At the RAPP Center, scientists from TU Dortmund University, Ruhr University Bochum, the University of Duisburg-Essen, and the University of Wuppertal are investigating the fundamental laws and properties of our universe. The planetarium show brings current space research to a wide audience.

Plasma, particles, and astrophysics – at first glance, these terms may sound abstract. However, the new planetarium show “Our Exotic Universe” proves that the results of these research disciplines can be visually stunning. Researchers from the RAPP Center developed and implemented the show together with the team at the Bochum Planetarium to celebrate the center’s tenth anniversary. In the new show, visitors embark on a fascinating journey of discovery to extreme places of the Universe. They find themselves in the midst of the remnants of a star explosion, see galaxies glowing in radio light, and experience how a star is torn apart at the edge of a massive black hole.

“We are very pleased to be able to present our work in this way and make it accessible to a wide audience,” says Professor Julia Tjus, director of the RAPP Center and Professor of Physics at Ruhr University Bochum. “Many of the images shown were taken by the researchers themselves, for example with telescopes in Antarctica, on La Palma, or at CERN.” The production at the Bochum Planetarium was made possible through funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG): The research presented in the show is part of the Collaborative Research Center 1491 “Cosmic Interacting Matter – From Source to Signal”.  Starting in 2026, it will also be showcased in other cities and abroad.

Cooperation at the RAPP-Center

At the joint research facility of the University Alliance Ruhr (UA Ruhr), the three partner universities have been merging their expertise in particle, astro, and plasma physics and have been cooperating with partners from the University of Wuppertal since 2015. From TU Dortmund University, the research groups of Professor Johannes Albrecht, Professor Kevin Kröninger, and Professor Wolfgang Rhode from the Department of Physics, as well as Professor Jens Teubner’s group from the Department of Computer Science Department are part of the RAPP Center.

At the research center, scientists are investigating topics such as the origin of cosmic rays, how magnetic fields are created in the Universe, and the nature of dark matter and neutrino particles. In the future, the center plans to establish new research priorities in the field of artificial intelligence. Additionally, it will broaden its research to collision-dominated plasmas in which collisions between gas particles occur. These play a significant role in astrophysics in certain locations, near the Sun or in molecular clouds, and can be studied in the laboratory. The universities in Bochum, Dortmund, and Duisburg-Essen, which have been cooperating in the UA Ruhr since 2007, aim to collaborate even more closely in this area.

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