Comet Physics Laboratory

The Comet Physics Laboratory - CoPhyLab - is a joint German, Austrian and Swiss research project to investigate cometary processes in space simulation laboratories.

Therefore, scientists in Braunschweig, Graz and Bern are developing, constructing, and performing various experiments with the help of several other partner institutions and experts. To be able to simulate comets in the laboratory, their environment needs to be implemented, e.g. low as densities and low temperatures. Thus, our main facilitiy, which is nearly ready to operate, is a huge vacuum chamber with a complex cooling shield – called “L chamber”.

The L-Chamber is located in Braunschweig, but numerous smaller facilities are used at the partner institutions as well. In parallel we also work on numerical simulations to support the understanding of our experiments and of course to achieve a better understanding of how comets work.

The funding of CoPhyLab has expired in 2022 but experiments will contine on all partner sites and in joint efforts.