News

150th anniversary of Quetelet’s death

150 years ago, on February 17, 1874, Adolphe Quetelet, founder and first director of the Royal Observatory of Belgium, passed away. He was one of the best-known Belgians of his time. A keen statistician, he is best known as the inventor of the Quetelet index, better known today as the BMI (Body Mass Index). Books have been written about this [...]

International Day of Women in Science: interview with Fabienne and Sabrina

February 11 is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, a day recognised by UNESCO. According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 33.3% of scientists are women. This percentage is of the same order of magnitude as that of female researchers at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, which is between 30 and 35% women among its scientific staff. [...]

Seismic Activity in/around Belgium in 2023

In 2023, 120 earthquakes and 3 induced earthquakes were located by the Royal Observatory of Belgium in or near Belgium. Six earthquakes were felt by the population near the Belgian territory (Germany). [...]

Commemoration of the Liège 1983 earthquake

On Wednesday 8 November 1983, 40 years ago, a medium-sized earthquake shook the city of Liège. This earthquake occurred in the middle of the night at 1:49 am local time (0:49 UTC) and had its epicenter in the commune of Saint-Nicolas, a densely populated municipality west of the city of Liège. This is the last earthquake with significant damage in [...]

Gaia Observes a Cosmic Clock Inside a Large Planetary Nebula

The ESA Gaia mission website recently published an image of a planetary nebula, supplemented with three years of data gathered by the satellite. Inside this object, twinkles a blue dot with a very regular pulse of light. This is the mother binary star system of the planetary nebula. Truly a hefty cosmic clock in our galaxy!  [...]

Dust played a major role in dinosaur demise

Fine dust from pulverized rock generated by the Chicxulub impact likely played a dominant role in global climate cooling and the disruption of photosynthesis following the event. This is suggested by a new study published in Nature Geoscience, in which researchers Cem Berk Cenel, Özgür Karatekin and Orkun Temel of the Royal Observatory of Belgium contributed. [...]

A molten layer at the base of the Martian mantle?

Brussels, 26 October 2023 – The analysis, by a team of scientists involved in the InSight mission, of seismic data recorded on Mars after a meteorite impact that occurred in September 2021 drastically changes our view of the internal structure and evolution of the Red Planet. Based on these results and previous geophysical data, a study published on October 26 [...]