Prof. Paolo Sossi - COPL member - gave his Inaugural Lecture "A cookbook for planets - from the lab to outer space" at ETH Zurich on 15 May 2023. See recording
Nobel laureate Didier Queloz - Director of the COPL - gave his Inaugural Lecture "The exoplanet revolution" at ETH Zurich on 2 May 2023. See recording
In the Autumn Semester 2024, an 'Origin and Prevalence of Life' related extension of the existing Bachelor of Science in Interdisciplinary Sciences is available for the first time. Interested students are invited to submit their applications.
26 Apr 2024 - How did life on Earth begin and proliferate? And is there life beyond our planet? At this ETH Global Lecture, Nobel Prize winner Didier Queloz and former NASA research head Thomas Zurbuchen discuss what is already known about the origin of life on Earth and beyond, what projects are underway at ETH Zurich – and what life itself has taught them.
We are very pleased to announce the 2024 Cohort of the NOMIS-ETH Fellows. Between July and September three postdoctoral fellows will join the COPL thanks to the generous support that we receive from the NOMIS Foundation.
Physicists at ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich wanted to know whether the planned LIFE space mission could really detect traces of life on other planets. Yes, it can. The researchers reached this conclusion with the help of observations of our own planet.
How did the reactions that first produced life on Earth cope with scarce bio-essential elements before the evolution of enzymes? Cosmic dust may have fuelled prebiotic chemistry. Natural sedimentary processes could have concentrated cosmic dust into nutrient-rich deposits. Our study challenges the idea that cosmic dust wasn't a local fertilizer for early life.