Universe sciences : spotlight on ERC projects

What is the origin of the Universe? How do galaxies form and evolve? Is there a possibility of extra-terrestrial life? This brochure presents a few projects addressing some of the most important challenges in the field of Universe Sciences which were funded by the European Research Council (ERC). Universe Sciences encompass all research areas related to astronomy and astrophysics, including astrophysics/chemistry/biology, the solar system, stellar, galactic and extragalactic astronomy, planetary systems, cosmology, space science, and instrumentation. To date the ERC has supported close to 180 ground-breaking, high-gain/high-risk projects covering all the above-mentioned areas for a total budget of almost EUR 350 million. Among these projects, the highest number are in cosmology: scientists explore the big mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, others study modified gravity, the cosmic microwave background, pulsars, the general relativity theory, cosmic inflation, the epoch of reionization, and the anisotropic universe/large-scale structure of the universe. Another area of growing scientific interest is the search for and study of exoplanets, since their discovery in the early 1990s. Currently, more than a dozen ERC projects have exoplanets as their main focus of research. Several of these projects have links with astrobiology, and a special topic is the habitability of exoplanets. This brochure has been published on the occasion of the Joint ESA-ERC networking event on frontiers of space sciences and technology, taking place on 10-11 November 2015 at the European Space Agency.