Homologous recombination is an essential DNA repair mechanism that also promotes chromosome pairing and ensures allele segregation during meiosis in sexual organisms. Here, we explore the dual function of homologous recombination in the bdelloid rotifer Adineta vaga, an asexual species known for its remarkable resilience to extreme genotoxic stresses. Genomic analyses reveal that A. vaga…
Gaia BH3 is an extraordinary binary system located about 590 parsecs, roughly 1900 light-years, from Earth. It contains a black hole about 33 times the mass of the Sun, the most massive known black hole of stellar origin, accompanied by an ancient low-mass star. Using the UVES spectrograph on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, an international…
A new European Southern Observatory (ESO) study has found that current proposals to launch over 1.7 million satellites into orbit, including extremely bright ones, would have “devastating consequences for astronomy.” According to the study, no more than 100 000 faint satellites, below naked eye visibility, should orbit Earth, to safeguard our ability to observe the…
Meteorites are messengers from interplanetary space that preserve information about the earliest moments of our Solar System. Yet once they land on Earth, their story does not stop: it continues evolving. Recently, a Belgian-Chilean research team, including two members of BLU (G. A. Pinto and V. Debaille), has shown that salts can form within meteorites…
The Atacama Desert, with its crystal-clear skies and high-altitude plateaus, serves as the stage for one of modern astronomy’s most ambitious projects: 4MOST (4-metre Multi-Object Spectrograph Telescope). Installed on the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) VISTA telescope in Chile, this revolutionary instrument represents a decade-long collaboration involving over 800 scientists and engineers. Their mission is to…
Un article Daily Sciences publié le 26 février 2026 Ces muscles du cœur que la microgravité affaiblit
Une étude pilotée par Cyril Tordeur, doctorant en sciences biomédicales et pharmaceutiques à la faculté de médecine de l’ULB, révèle que certaines structures du cœur des cosmonautes de la Station spatiale internationale (ISS) s’atrophient, malgré un entraînement…
Un chercheur de l’ULB engagé au cœur de l’IceCube Upgrade en Antarctique. Felix Schlüter a contribué au déploiement d’une extension stratégique de l’observatoire. Un jalon majeur pour la physique des neutrinos et les futures générations du détecteur. L’Observatoire de neutrinos IceCube, installé dans un kilomètre cube de glace à la station Amundsen-Scott, a récemment achevé…
Un article Daily Sciences publié le 13 février 2026 A l’ULB, le BLUmonday a été lumineux et spatial
Le fameux « blue monday », ce lundi supposé être le plus déprimant de l’année, n’a rien eu de morose à l’Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). À la place d’un état d’esprit hivernal et léthargique, une communauté…
On Monday, January 19, 2026, the Brussels Laboratory of the Universe (BLU-ULB) held its Annual Meeting (BAM'26) at ULB on the Solbosch campus, bringing together nearly 60 ULB researchers from many disciplines around space science. This new edition once again highlighted the richness and diversity of space-related research activities at ULB. The morning session…
The IRS sounder aboard the European MTG-S1 satellite, launched on 1 July 2025, released its first images on 27 January 2026, revealing an unprecedented view of Earth’s atmosphere. From its geostationary position at an altitude of approximately 36,000 km, IRS continuously observes the Europe–Africa disk at high spatial resolution, with a temporal sampling of 48…
Researchers from ULB (Faculté des Sciences de la Motricité, de Médecine and Polytechnique) have recently published two articles in npj Microgravity , studying the effects of microgravity on the cardiovascular system . This international project, initiated more than a decade ago, was funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Belgian Science Policy Office…