The Science Week 2025 - Celebrating seven years of ORIGINS Science, 2019 - 2025

1 Dec 2025, 09:00 → 5 Dec 2025, 17:01 Europe/Berlin

Kloster Seeon

The Excellence Cluster ORIGINS hosts their annual Science Week this year at beautiful Kloster Seeon in Upper Bavaria. 

The 2025's edition, special in many ways, is extended one more night and runs until Friday early afternoon to summarize and celebrate ORIGINS success in view of the renewal.

The agenda will include overview and science highlight talks from our research units, connectors and infrastructures, our annual General Assembly, PhD Awards talks and Laudations, Seed Money posters, as well as talks from invited guests on currently hot topics.

Scientific Organization Committee: Ilka Brunner, Andreas Burkert, Barbara Ercolano, Laura Fabbietti, Erwin Frey, Mathias Garny, Ulrich Gerland, Daniel Gruen, Lukas Heinrich, Bruno Leibundgut, Stephan Paul, Stefan Schoenert, Petra Schwille, Sherry Suyu, Jochen Weller

Bus list

Posters Session Wednesday.docx

ScienceWeekFlyer2025_Web.pdf

ScienceWeekPoster-template2025.pptx

ScienceWeek-SeedMoneyPoster-template2025.pptx

Seed Money Posters on Tuesday.docx

Monday 1 December

11:00 → 12:00 Arrivals and Registrations

12:00 → 13:30 Lunch

13:30 → 13:40 Opening and Welcome

Speakers: Andreas Burkert (LMU), Stephan Paul (TUM)

13:40 → 14:00 ORIGINS Review in a Nutshell

Speaker: Halina Abramowicz

Origins-nutshell-Dec2025.pdf

14:00 → 14:50 RU-C External Highlight : Hubble Troubles

Despite its spectacular success, the ΛCDM model is ultimately phenomenological: it establishes a robust framework in which some fundamental issues remain unresolved. With observations becoming increasingly precise, it is reasonable to expect that “something's gotta give" and that the ΛCDM model will show some cracks. The Hubble tension— the discrepancy
between the value of the Hubble parameter, when inferred as a global parameter of the standard cosmological model, and when measured directly in the late-time Universe from the redshift-to-distance relation—has been looming for a decade and has been studied extensively. Could it be such a crack? I will give an overview of the status of the Hubble tension and tentatively speculate on why it has persisted thus far.

Speaker: Licia Verde (Universidad de Barcelona)

2-Hubble troubles Origins.pdf

14:50 → 15:40 Towards an Era of Artificial Scientists

Speaker: Mario Krenn (Uni. Tübingen)

3-Krenn_ORIGINS.pdf

15:40 → 16:10 Coffee & Tea

16:10 → 16:25 Laudatio to PhD Award Winner

Speaker: Peter Predehl (MPE)

16:25 → 17:05 PhD Award Talk: Chemically Fueled Dynamic Combinatorial Libraries Towards Synthetic Life

Speaker: Christine Kriebisch

2025_Origins Award 2 Kriebisch.key

17:05 → 17:20 Laudatio to PhD Award Winner

Speaker: Hermann Gaub (LMU)

17:20 → 18:00 PhD Award Talk : Geothermal Microfluidic Systems Foster Prebiotic Chemistry

Speaker: Thomas Matreux (LMU - Systems Biophysics)

Talk_Matreux.pdf

18:00 → 20:00 Dinner

20:00 → 21:00 After Dinner Talk : The Fine Tuned Universe

Speaker: Harald Lesch (LMU)

Tuesday 2 December

09:00 → 09:50 RU-D "Galaxies, Stars and Planets" Summary

Speakers: Eric Emsellem (ESO), Stefan Heigl (LMU), Anna Miotello (ESO Garching)

7-RU-D-ScienceWeek2025 .pdf

09:50 → 10:10 RU-D : Pearls on Strings

Speaker: Maryam Arab Salmani (Vera Rubin Fellow)

10:10 → 10:40 CN-2 "Planets and other Habitats" Summary

Speakers: Barbara Ercolano, Til Birnstiel (LMU)

9-CN2-Summary-2025.pdf

10:40 → 11:00 CN-2 Highlight Talk : Habitability of Exomoons around Free-floating Planets

Speaker: David Dahlbüdding (LMU)

10-CN-2-Highlight_Dahlbüdding_ScienceWeek2025.pdf

11:00 → 11:30 Coffee, Tea and VRLab Demonstrations

11:30 → 12:00 CN-1 "Black Holes" Summary

Speaker: Valentin Thoss (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)

Science Week 2025 Overview Talk.pdf

12:00 → 13:50 Lunch Break

13:50 → 14:40 RU-D External Highlight : The new frontier: Identifying other Earths

Speaker: Lisa Kaltenegger (Cornell Universitz)

12-Kaltenegger2025_OriginsMunich.pdf

14:40 → 15:10 CN-5 "Turbulence" Summary

Speaker: Klaus Dolag (MPA)

15:10 → 15:40 Coffee, Tea and VRLab Demonstrations

15:40 → 16:00 CN-5 : SLOWly matching reality: turbulent velocities from constrained simulations compared to XRISM observations

Constrained simulations offer a new path to interpret observations by allowing one-to-one comparisons between observed galaxy clusters from the local Universe and simulated analogs, which show similar thermodynamical and dynamical properties. I will present a study on the turbulent velocities and turbulent pressure support in Coma, Perseus, and Virgo, compared to XRISM X-ray spectroscopic velocity determinations. Simulations show excellent agreement with observations, having consistently very low turbulent pressure support of only a few percent. In particular, all the turbulent pressure support in all three clusters is smaller than average values from statistical studies, showing the importance of selection effects.

Speaker: Frederick Groth (USM, LMU)

FGroth_CN5_Highlight.pdf

16:00 → 16:20 CN-6 "Cosmic Accelerators" Summary

Speaker: Daniele Villa (Max-Planck-Insitute for Plasma Physics)

CN6.pdf

16:20 → 16:40 CN-6 : Radiative signatures of electron-ion shocks in blazar jets

Shocks are promising sites of particle acceleration in extragalactic jets. In electron-ion shocks, electrons can be heated up to large Lorentz factors, making them an attractive explanation for the high minimum electron Lorentz factors regularly needed to model blazar SEDs. Still, the thermal electron component is commonly neglected when modelling observations. In this talk, we present a multi-wavelength modelling of the blazar Mrk421 employing a particle distribution whose shape is directly motivated by predictions of plasma PIC simulations. We demonstrate that fluxes in the optical/UV and MeV-GeV bands efficiently restrict the emission from the thermal (relativistic) Maxwellian electrons, allowing us to obtain constraints on the shock properties. Notably, we find that at least ~10% of the shock energy must be transferred to the nonthermal electrons in order to stay compatible with the fluxes in the optical/UV and MeV-GeV bands. These results are almost insensitive to the shock velocity, although radio observations suggest a shock Lorentz factor above ~5. In the second part of the talk, we present preliminary results of dedicated PIC simulations to verify under which physical conditions of electron-ion shocks these findings can be matched.

Speaker: Axel Arbet-Engels (Max Planck Institute Munich)

Origins_electron_ion_shocks-1.pdf

16:40 → 17:10 CN-7 "Matter under Extreme Conditions" Summary

Speaker: Laura Fabbietti (TUM)

CN7.pdf

17:10 → 17:30 CN-7 : An asymmetric fission island driven by shell effects in light fragments

Studying the distribution of the masses and charges of the fragments is essential for establishing the fission mechanisms and refining the theoretical models. It has value for our understanding of r-process nucleosynthesis, in which the fission of nuclei with extreme neutron-to-proton ratios is pivotal for determining astrophysical abundances and understanding the origin of the elements. Although the asymmetric distribution of fragments is well understood for actinides based on shell effects, symmetric fission governs the scission process for lighter elements. However, unexpected asymmetric splits have been observed in neutron-deficient exotic nuclei, prompting extensive further investigations. Here we present measurements of the charge distributions of fission fragments for 100 exotic fissioning systems, 75 of which have never been measured, and establish a connection between the neutron-deficient sub-lead region and the well-understood actinide region.

Speaker: Roman Gernhaeuser (TUM)

Roman_Seon_2025_R3Bfission_v04.pdf

17:30 → 18:30 Seed Money Poster Session ; VRLab Demos

18:30 → 20:30 Dinner Break

Wednesday 3 December

09:00 → 09:50 RU-C "Large-Scale Structure" Summary

Speakers: Steffen Hagstotz (LMU), Jochen Weller (LMU)

RU_C_summary_2019-2025_hagstotz.pdf

09:50 → 10:10 RU-C : Cosmic birefringence: a hint of new physics in cosmology and particle physics

The polarized light of the cosmic microwave background is sensitive to new physics that violates parity symmetry. For example, the interaction of photons with the fields of elusive dark matter and dark energy could cause a uniform rotation of the plane of linear polarization across the sky, an effect known as cosmic birefringence. Recent analyses of WMAP and Planck data have reported tantalizing hints of a cosmological rotation angle β=0.34°±0.09°, after calibrating the detectors' polarization angles against Galactic dust emission. Although it is still under scrutiny for its dependence on dust modeling, these results exclude β=0 with a statistical significance of 3.6σ. Here, we extract a new measurement of β using Bayesian analysis of parity-violating correlations, EB and TB, of polarization data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) Data Release 6. We use prior probabilities for instrumental miscalibration angles derived from the optics model for the ACT telescope and instruments, and marginalize over a residual intensity-to-polarization leakage. We measure β=0.215°±0.074° (68% confidence level), which excludes β=0 with a statistical significance of 2.9σ, without relying on Galactic dust for calibration. Although there remain systematics in the ACT data that are not understood and do not allow us to draw strong cosmological conclusions, the consistency of this result with previous independent measurements from the WMAP and Planck missions is very compelling.

Speaker: Patricia Diego Palazuelos (MPA)

ORIGINS_science_week_PDP.pdf

10:10 → 11:00 RU-A External Highlight: Low energy physics - precision tests of the Standard Model

Speaker: Klaus Blaum (MPIK)

ORIGINS-Cluster Blaum 2025 Web.pdf

11:00 → 11:20 Coffee, Tea & VRLab Demonstrations

11:20 → 12:10 RU-B External Highlight : JUNO in Operation : Entering the Data-Taking Era

Speaker: Juan Pedro Ochoa-Ricoux (University of California-Irvine)

JUNOResults_Ochoa_Dec2025.pdf

12:10 → 12:30 RU-B : Matter-antimatter asymmetry from a minimally extended SM

Speaker: Jacopo Azzola (TUM)

ScienceWeek_Azzola.pdf

12:30 → 14:00 Lunch

14:00 → 14:50 RU-B "Particles and the Cosmos" Summary

Speakers: Stefan Schönert (TUM), Andreas Weiler (TU Munich)

14:50 → 15:00 Group Photo

15:00 → 17:00 Hike to village of Seeon on lake and optional stop at Camba Bavaria Brewery

17:00 → 18:00 Poster Session and XR Demos for ORIGINS physics education

Speakers: Christoph Hoyer (LMU-Lehrstuhl für Didaktik der Physik), Aishwarya Girdhar (LMU- Physics Didactics), Raphael Cera (LMU-Lehrstuhl für Didaktik der Physik), Jochen Kuhn (LMU)

18:00 → 20:00 Dinner

Thursday 4 December

09:00 → 09:50 RU-A "Fundamental Particles and Forces" Summary

Speakers: Martin Beneke (TUM), Ilka Brunner (LMU), Thomas Kuhr (LMU)

09:50 → 10:10 RU-A : Highlights from Belle (II)

Speaker: Stefan Wallner (Max Planck Institute for Physics)

2025-12-04_Origins-Science-Week_BelleII-Highlights_fixed.pdf

10:10 → 10:40 CN-3 "Dark Matter" Summary

Speaker: Mathias Garny (TUM)

CN3 summary 2025.pdf

10:40 → 11:10 Coffee & Tea

11:10 → 11:30 CN-3 : From Cosmology to Particle Physics: Dark Matter decaying into neutrinos

Dark matter (DM) decaying into invisible particles can leave an imprint in large-scale structure surveys due to a characteristic redshift-dependent suppression of the power spectrum. One possible realization of such a scenario is a model with two quasi-degenerate singlet fermions in which the heavier state decays into the lighter state plus two additional neutrinos. Our set-up is able to connect DM to neutrino physics by generating non-zero neutrino masses, a freeze-in production of DM via neutrinos, as well as a diffuse neutrino flux accessible to JUNO. At the same time, a small mass-splitting between the DM particles is induced radiatively which is responsible for the cosmological signatures in forthcoming large-scale-structure surveys. This model thus showcases the complementarity of cosmological probes and neutrino particle physics

Speaker: Lea Fuß (Technical University Munich)

ORIGINS_Science_Fuß.pdf

11:30 → 12:00 CN-4 "Dark Energy" Summary

Speakers: Fabian Schmidt (MPA), Ariel Sanchez (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics)

CN4 Summary Seeon Dec 2025.pdf

12:00 → 12:20 CN-4 "Dark Energy" Highlight : Current DESI Results and Physics Beyond Standard Cosmological Model

Speaker: Jiamin Hou (University of Cambridge)

20251204-ScienceWeek.pdf

12:20 → 14:00 Lunch

14:00 → 14:50 RU-E "Prebiotc Molecules and Origins of Life" Summary

Speakers: Dieter Braun (LMU Munich), Oliver Trapp

14:50 → 15:05 MIAPbP Summary

Speaker: Rolf Kudritzki (USM LMU/MIAPP)

2025_MIAPbP_ScW_new.pptx

15:05 → 15:20 LRSM Summary

Speaker: Martin Losekamm (Technische Universität München)

20251203_ScieneWeek2025_LRSM_summary.pdf

15:20 → 15:45 Coffee & Tea

15:45 → 16:00 C2PAP Summary

Speaker: Klaus Dolag (MPA)

16:00 → 16:15 ODSL Summary

Speaker: Lukas Heinrich (TUM)

16:15 → 16:30 IDSL summary

Speaker: Dieter Braun (LMU Munich)

16:30 → 17:30 ORIGINS Administrative Summary (A. Burkert, S.Paul, I. Haneburger, A. M. Smith-Gicklhorn, S. Waldenmaier, O. Straub, S. Schmid-Willers, P. Regenscheit, C. Reichart, S. Rittel, B. Rothmeier)

Speakers: Andreas Burkert (LMU), Stephan Paul (TUM)

Final-2025-GASlides-4-Dec-vers2+.pptx

17:30 → 18:30 Break

18:30 → 19:00 Laudation to our Spokespersons: Andreas Burkert & Stephan Paul (2006-2025)

19:00 → 21:00 Festive Dinner

Friday 5 December

09:00 → 09:50 RU-E Highlight : Toward designing life-like systems

Speaker: Erwin Frey (LMU)

09:50 → 10:10 CN-8 Highlight : Self-organization and molecular transport by prokaryotic protein systems

Speaker: Beatrice Ramm (Friedrich Miescher Laboratory of the Max Planck Society)

10:10 → 10:40 CN-8 "Emergence of Structure" Summary

Speaker: Ulrich Gerland (TUM)

10:40 → 11:10 Coffee and tea break

11:10 → 11:30 The Geoastronomy of Small Exoplanets

One of the biggest surprises of exoplanet science is the discovery of the small exoplane ppopulation between the sizes of Earth and Neptune. Super Earths appear to be scaled-up versions of rocky planets. However, it is less clear that sub-Neptunes are scaled-down versions of gas-giant planets, other than by analogy. The rocky cores and atmospheres of sub-Neptunes occupy comparable volumes (and thus have comparable extents in radius), but the cores dominate the mass budget if the atmospheres are hydrogen-dominated. Since the cores dominate the masses of sub-Neptunes, geochemical outgassing cannot be ignored. I will show that the temperature-pressure conditions at the surfaces of these cores exert a zeroth-order control on the atmospheric chemistry. Less massive (and smaller) sub-Neptunes have lower core surface pressures and temperatures, which leads to atmospheres with higher mean molecular weights. This naturally leads to a gradient in mean molecular weight across the radius valley of small exoplanets. The strength of this gradient is controlled by the oxygen fugacity of these cores and not by the elemental abundance of carbon. These results imply a need to shift one’s mental framework away from the planet formation-driven approach of prioritising “metallicity” and towards the more geoscience-oriented approach of understanding the oxidation states of rocky mantles via the oxygen fugacity.

Speaker: Kevin Heng (LMU)

11:30 → 12:20 Special Guest : "Cosmic Evolution of Black Holes"

More than a century ago, Albert Einstein presented his general theory of gravitation. One of the predictions of this theory is that not only particles and objects with mass, but also the quanta of light, photons, are tied to the curvature of space-time, and thus to gravity. There must be a critical mass density, above which photons cannot escape. These are black holes. Most galaxies host massive black holes of masses between millions to billions of solar masses at their nuclei, which can become active galactic nuclei and quasars when they accrete gas and stars rapidly. I will discuss the major progress that has happened in the last decades to prove the massive black hole paradigm through ever more detailed, high-resolution observations, in the center of our own Galaxy, as well as in external galaxies. In the Galactic Center such high-resolution observations can also be used to test General Relativity in the regime of large masses and curvatures. I will also discuss very recent observations that there are massive black holes already a few hundred Myrs after the Big Bang.

Speaker: Reinhard Genzel (MPE)

12:20 → 12:30 Final Remarks & Discussion

12:30 → 14:15 Lunch

14:15 → 14:20 Buses leaves for Munich