Dr. Pascal Rosenblatt (Royal Observatory of Belgium), Friday September 30, 13:00, ULB.
The two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, were first thought to be asteroids captured by the red planet. The remote sensing of their surfaces argue in favor of this scenario but the present near-circular and near-equatorial orbit of the two moons could not fit expected orbits of capture objects. An alternative scenario has been proposed in which the two small moons of Mars were formed after a giant collision occurred more than 4 billions years ago, similarly to the formation of our Moon. But this scenario raises challenges as how to form small moons (and not a big one as for the Earth) and to maintain them in orbit around Mars over billions of years.

At the last European Association of Archaeologists meeting held in Vilnius, Lithuania, Christophe Snoeck was interviewed by “Deutschlandfunk” (nationwide German radio broadcast) to talk about his recent research on the isotopic studies of cremated remains. He discusses the process of cremation itself as well as the possbility to use strontium isotopes on cremated remains for mobility studies.
The interview was aired at “Deutschlandfunk” (nationwide radio broadcast, ~ the “German BBC”) at the daily science show “Forschung aktuell” on Friday 2 September 2016

Listen to the inverview here

The 2016 “Solvay Prize” is awarded to Dr. Bert Wouters (promotor Prof. dr. S. Eeltink) for his work on groundbreaking research on the development of a microfluidic chip for spatial three dimensional chromatography.