Research carried out by a scientific team from the University of Heidelberg (UH), the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) has allowed them to solve the abundance discrepancy, a puzzle over 80 years old, about the chemical composition of the Universe. They find that the effect of the variations in temperatura in the large gas clouds where stars are born has led to the underestimation of the quantity of heavy elements in the Universe. The results have been published in the prestigious journal Nature. All the stars are born, live

The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) celebrates International Women's Day by publicizing the work of the women on the staff, and making a balance sheet of the state of gender equality in the Institute. The IAC started its activities in gender equality in 2008, when the Commission on Equality was founded, with the aim of finding the means and the actions needed for the active incorporationof the principle of effective equality between men and women and designing its first Equality Plan. At the present time the Institute is applying its third Equality Plan, which includes 8

A numerical experiment conducted by two researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), Daniel Nöbrega Siverio and Fernando Moreno Insertis, has allowed them to show, for the first time, how one of the most widely distributed structures in the solar atmosphere, the coronal bright points, can form and acquire energy by the action of the solar granulation. When the Sun is observed from space detectors of X-rays or the extreme-ultraviolet, its atmosphere is found to be full of bright points, both during solar active epochs when a large number of sunspots is observed, and during