Press releases

Prehistory literally in front of our eyes. A monumental Stone Age building, the so-called roundel, has been researched by scientists in Prague-Vinoř since July. Research into the nearly seven thousand-year-old circular architecture has so far revealed exceptionally well-preserved remains and an unusual floor plan with three entrances. The extent of the fieldwork is also unique: archaeologists are gradually going to uncover the structure almost in its entirety.

Today (September 27, 2022) at 1:14 AM CEST NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft successfully conducted the world’s first full-scale planetary defense test by impacting asteroid moonlet Dimorphos (Greek for “two forms”), which orbits a larger asteroid named Didymos (Greek for “twin”). The kinetic impact demonstrated one possible method of asteroid deflection technology. As a part of an international planetary defense strategy, the DART mission proved that a spacecraft can autonomously navigate to a target asteroid and intentionally collide with it to alter its orbit. DART is accompanied by a small Italian sub-spacecraft called LICIACube, which observed the impact from a distance.

A new protein that plays a key role during sperm-egg adhesion and fusion has been discovered by an international team led by Kateřina Komrsková from the Institute of Biotechnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences at the BIOCEV Centre and the Faculty of Science of Charles University in Prague. The researchers also developed special cell cultures for the “production” of human oocyte proteins. In the future, these new findings may help in the diagnosis and treatment of infertility and could also lead to better contraceptives.

A research centre of excellence focused on the molecular life of plants will be established at the Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Thanks to a European grant in the ERA Chair program, the Biology Centre will establish two new research groups in plant molecular biology, strengthen plant research and appoint a six-member International advisory board led by the renowned plant biologist Jiří Friml. The project called MOLIPEC will start in January 2023, but the centre is already calling for candidates for research group leaders.

Even though the largest Czech telescope with a mirror lens diameter of two metres and a total weight of over 80 tonnes is already 55 years old, it is still in excellent technical condition. It has produced plenty of results and is taking part in the largest number of observing programmes in its history. The Perek Telescope has been operated by the Astronomical Institute of the CAS in Ondřejov since August 1967.

Travel guides were known and used even by people in ancient times, most often by sailors and merchants, for whom a new genre of travel guides was created: the periplus. It contained not only practical information about sailing, but sometimes also interesting facts collected from different countries. Ancient Greece also produced guidebooks that can still be used as sightseeing guides to this day. Vladislav Knoll from the Institute of Slavonic Studies of the CAS describes ancient monuments and records preserved mainly in medieval (Byzantine) manuscripts.

In the Czech Republic, there is lack of systematic research on ethical problems related to climate change and the so-called emerging technologies. The situation is about to change thanks to the newly forming international research Center of Environmental and Technology Ethics – Prague (CETE-P) at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Thanks to a prestigious European grant awarded to the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Mark Coeckelbergh from the University of Vienna will participate in its establishment and development.

An extensive series of experiments has been carried out by researchers from the Institute of Plasma Physics of the CAS and the international ITER project, which aims to start producing clean and almost inexhaustible energy through the so-called tokamak within the next four years. For the first time, scientists have been able to provide experimental evidence of a physical limit to the electric currents flowing between the plasma and the first reactor wall at a time when the plasma is unstable. The new findings, published in the Nuclear Fusion journal, will help improve computer models for future fusion reactors.

The global food system is in the crisis of growth-addicted development. Exploitative of humans and animals, ecologically rapacious, hooked on fossil fuels, and controlled by a small number of multi-national corporations from food to fork, this system produces massive quantities of the wrong foods at incredible social, ecological and economic cost. With food crises again looming on the near horizon, a strategy to tweak and maintain the current growth-driven food system is highly questionable.

Large amounts of pesticides in agricultural production can negatively affect mycorrhizal fungi, invisible to the naked eye, and thus the ubiquitous cooperation between plants and soil micro-organisms. This is suggested by the results of a unique giant survey of more than 200 soil areas from Spain to Sweden. Among the experts, who examined how mycorrhizal fungi influence the transport of phosphorus from soil to plants, were also scientists from the Institute of Microbiology of the CAS.