Skip to main content
  • Paul Scherrer Institut PSI
  • PSI Research, Labs & User Services

Digital User Office

  • Digital User Office
  • DE
  • EN
  • FR
Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI)
Suche
Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI)

Hauptnavigation

  • Our ResearchOpen mainmenu item
    • Current topics from our research
    • Matter and Material
    • Human Health
    • Energy and Environment
    • Large Research Facilities
    • Brochures
    • 5232 — The PSI magazine
  • IndustryOpen mainmenu item
    • Overview
    • Technology Transfer
    • Expertise
    • Spin-off Companies
    • Park Innovaare
  • Proton TherapyOpen mainmenu item
    • Overview
    • Physician & Patient Information
  • CareerOpen mainmenu item
    • Overview
    • Job Opportunities
    • Working at PSI
    • Personnel Policy
    • Training and Further Education
    • Vocational Training
    • PSI Education Centre
    • Support Program "PSI Career Return Program"
    • PSI-FELLOW/COFUND
  • Visit to PSIOpen mainmenu item
    • Overview
    • Visitor Centre psi forum
    • Schülerlabor iLab
    • Public Events
    • How to find us
  • About PSIOpen mainmenu item
    • PSI in brief
    • Strategy
    • Guiding principles
    • Facts and figures
    • Organisational structure
    • Für die Medien
    • Suppliers and customers
    • Customers E-Billing
    • Contact
  • DE
  • EN
  • FR

Digital User Office (mobile)

  • Digital User Office

You are here:

  1. PSI Home
  2. Our Research
  3. Current topics from our research
  4. Environment

Secondary navigation

Our Research

  • Current topics from our research Expanded submenu item
    • Matter and Material
    • Human Health
    • Energy and Environment
    • ESI Platform
    • Large research facilities
    • Project SLS 2.0
    • Topic Overview
    • Archive
  • 5232 – The magazine of the Paul Scherrer Institute
    • Contact
  • Brochures
  • Films
    • Virtual Tour
  • Media corner
    • Media Releases
    • Social Media Newsroom

Enviroment

18 November 2020
Kaspar Dällenbach

Which particulate air pollution poses the greatest health risk?

Media Releases Energy and Environment Human Health Enviroment

The composition of particulate matter can influence its harmfulness to human health just as much as the amount, PSI researchers show in a newly published study. Experiments and computational modelling showed that in Europe high concentrations of particulate matter harmful to human health occur mainly in metropolitan areas.

Read more
23 October 2020
Waldrundgang Teaser

SwissFEL: a perfect habitat for the black mortar bee

Large Research Facilities SwissFEL Miscellaneous Enviroment

For the construction of the SwissFEL facility in 2013, around five hectares of forest were cleared and transformed into a new habitat for flora and fauna. Biologists and forest engineers have now assessed the results of the renaturization project and are excited about the progress to date.

Read more
1 October 2020
Iodsäure beeinflusst Wolkenbildung am Nordpol

Iodic acid influences cloud formation at the North Pole

Energy and Environment Enviroment

An international team of scientists has identified a novel driver of new aerosol particle formation in the Arctic: iodic acid, a chemical compound, which had not previously been observed in the region.

Read more
7 April 2020
Teaser Radioaktive Stoffe im Güterverkehr

Sniffing out radioactive substances in freight transport

Enviroment

With a mobile measurement portal, PSI regularly carries out radioactivity checks on heavy goods vehicles. The purpose of this work, on behalf of the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health, is to discover stray radiation sources.

Read more
13 March 2020
Teaser: Erstmals chemische Reaktionen direkt im Feinstaub nachgewiesen

First-time direct proof of chemical reactions in particulates

Media Releases Enviroment Energy and Environment

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have developed a new method to analyse particulate matter more precisely than ever before. With its help, they disproved an established doctrine: that molecules in aerosols undergo no further chemical transformations because they are enclosed in other particulate matter.

Read more
20 September 2019
Teaser 13 Monate in der Arktis

Thirteen months in the Arctic

Enviroment Energy and Environment

A PSI research project investigating atmospheric chemistry will be on board the icebreaker Polarstern on 20th September 2019. Researcher Julia Schmale talks about the upcoming expedition and her role in it.

Read more
25 July 2019
Teaser Forschen über den Wolken

Research above – and about – the clouds

Enviroment Energy and Environment

At the Jungfraujoch research station, PSI scientists study particulate matter in the atmosphere. And have to deal with the fact that the human body is not made for life at 3,500 metres above sea level.

Read more
13 June 2019
teaser an frischer luft und im smog

In fresh air and in smog

Enviroment Energy and Environment

PSI researchers drill through millennia-old glacier ice in the high mountains and analyse the world's highest particulate concentrations in Delhi, India. They are helping to address questions regarding climate change and to reduce air pollution.

Read more
17 October 2018
teaser picture

Why the Little Ice Age ended in the middle of the 19th century

Media Releases Energy and Environment Enviroment

In the first half of the 19th century, a series of large volcanic eruptions in the tropics led to a temporary global cooling of Earth's climate. That Alpine glaciers grew and subsequently receded again during the final phase of the so-called Little Ice Age was due to a natural process. This has now been proven by PSI researchers on the basis of ice cores.

Read more
26 September 2017

Atmosphere in X-ray light

Media Releases Energy and Environment Research Using Synchrotron Light Enviroment

PSI researchers have developed an experimental chamber in which they can recreate atmospheric processes and probe them with unprecedented precision, using X-ray light from the Swiss Light Source SLS. In the initial experiments, they have studied the production of bromine, which plays an essential role in the decomposition of ozone in the lower layers of the atmosphere. In the future, the new experiment chamber will also be available for use by researchers from other scientific fields.

Read more
9 February 2017

How Switzerland could supply its electric power in 2050

Enviroment Energy and Environment Renewable Energies ESI Platform

The Laboratory for Energy Systems Analysis at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI is investigating how Switzerland’s electricity supply might look, up to the year 2050, under a variety of boundary conditions. On the basis of their calculations, the lab’s researchers are able to generate insights on possible future developments of the energy sector, for example, determine how an ambitious reduction in CO2 emissions could be achieved at the lowest possible cost.

Read more
1 February 2017

Historical copper, trapped in ice

Media Releases Enviroment Energy and Environment

Until now, the onset of copper production in South America was still unclear. Hardly any written records or artefacts from the early high cultures in Peru, Chile, and Bolivia have been preserved. Now, however, researchers of the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI in Villigen (Switzerland) have tracked down the evidence. Through analysis of ice from the Illimani glacier in the Bolivian Andes, they found out that copper was being mined and smelted in South America since around 700 BC.

Read more
14 December 2016
teaser picture

The open-air researcher

Energy and Environment Enviroment

Atmospheric scientist Julia Schmale is starting out on a three-month research cruise around the Antarctic. There she will be searching for the cleanest air still to be found on our planet.

Read more
27 October 2016

The substances that brighten up the clouds

Media Releases Energy and Environment Enviroment

Clouds consist of tiny droplets. These droplets form when water condenses around so-called aerosols – small particles in the atmosphere. To understand how in turn aerosols come into existence scientists have now created a comprehensive computer model simulation based on profound experimental data. This simulation revealed that in addition to sulphuric acid, two other substances are crucially involved in the formation of aerosols: organic compounds and ammonia. These results have now been published in the renowned journal Science.

Read more
26 May 2016

Present-day measurements yield insights into clouds of the past

Media Releases Energy and Environment Enviroment

Researchers have shown how fine particles are formed from natural substances in the atmosphere. These findings will improve our knowledge about clouds in the pre-industrial era and thus will contribute to a more accurate understanding of both the past and future evolution of our climate.

Read more
26 April 2016

Trees Trade Carbon Among Each Other

Enviroment

Forest trees use carbon not only for themselves; they also trade large quantities of it with their neighbours. The extensive carbon trade among trees – even among different species – is conducted via symbiotic fungi in the soil.

Read more
30 July 2015

Radioactive waste caught in a cement trap

Energy and Environment Enviroment

In a deep geological repository, low and intermediate level radioactive waste from nuclear applications is solidified by cementitious materials for several thousand years. Researchers from the Paul Scherrer Institute and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have now demonstrated how cement limits the mobility of those radioactive substances. The new findings improve our understanding of the processes involved in this early phase of deep geological disposal.

Read more
This is a text from the PSI media archive. The contents may be out-of-date.
29 June 2015
teaser picture

Particulate matter from modern gasoline engines damages our lungs

Media Releases Enviroment Energy and Environment

For years, studies have proved that fine dust from petrol engines can damage our health. Modern engine technology does not help, either, as researchers from the University of Bern and the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) reveal.

Read more
This is a text from the PSI media archive. The contents may be out-of-date.
6 March 2015
teaser.jpg

Gasoline beats mining

Media Releases Enviroment

Until it was banned, leaded gasoline dominated the manmade lead emissions in South AmericaLeaded gasoline was a larger emission source of the toxic heavy metal lead than mining in South America à even though the extraction of metals from the region’s mines historically released huge quantities of lead into the environment. Researchers from the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI and the University of Bern have discovered evidence of the dominance of leaded gasoline based on measurements in an ice core from a Bolivian glacier. The scientists found that lead from road traffic in the neighbouring countries polluted the air twice as heavily as regional mining from the 1960s onwards. The study is to be published in the journal Science Advances on 6 March 2015.

Read more
This is a text from the PSI media archive. The contents may be out-of-date.
31 October 2014
MorgenSonneOst-teaser.jpg

When thawing glaciers release pollutants

Enviroment Energy and Environment Media Releases

As glaciers increasingly melt in the wake of climate change, it is not only the landscape that is affected. Thawing glaciers also release many industrial pollutants stored in the ice into the environment. Now, within the scope of a Swiss National Science Foundation project, researchers from the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Empa, ETH Zurich and the University of Berne have measured the concentrations of a class of these pollutants à polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) à in the ice of an Alpine glacier accurately for the first time.

Read more
This is a text from the PSI media archive. The contents may be out-of-date.
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • Next page ››
  • Last page Last »
Topic Overview

Sidebar

5232 01/2021

5232 — Das Magazin des Paul Scherrer Instituts

01/2021
in German
View in issuu.com
Download

Visitor Centre psi forum

Experience research live


The iLab School Laboratory

Experience Science - Explore Research

top

Footer

Paul Scherrer Institut

Forschungsstrasse 111
5232 Villigen PSI
Switzerland

Telephone: +41 56 310 21 11
Telefax: +41 56 310 21 99

How to find us
Contact form

Visitor Centre psi forum
School Lab iLab (in German)
Center for Proton Therapy
PSI Education Centre
PSI Guest House
PSI Gastronomie (in German)

 

Service & Support

  • Phone Book/People Search
  • User Office
  • Accelerator Status
  • PSI Publications
  • Suppliers
  • E-Billing
  • Computing
  • Safety (in German)

Career

  • Working at PSI
  • Job Opportunities
  • Training and further education
  • Vocational Training (in German)
  • PSI Education Center

For the media

  • PSI in brief
  • Facts and Figures
  • Media Contact
  • Media Releases
  • Social Media Newsroom

Follow us: Twitter (in English) LinkedIn Youtube Issuu RSS

Footer legal

  • Imprint
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Editors' login