Why do two Swiss researchers want to find ice on comets?

Using a new type of instrument, two astrophysicists from the University of Bern hope to get a little closer to unravelling the mystery of the origins of the solar system. They believe the key to this lies in the ice that can occur in a dust layer on comets. There is a lot of shaking and rattling going on in a small laboratory at the University of Bern, where researchers are testing equipment they want to send into space. On the shaking table today, however, is a discarded home computer that they want to push far beyond the limit for a test. In the end, plastic parts fly through the room, which is partitioned off by a thick pane of glass, and the computer is wrecked. In the next room, Nicolas Thomas watches through an armoured glass window. As a professor of experimental physics, he is aware of the impact on devices and people when a rocket launches. In 2016, Thomas was present at the Russian spaceport in Baikonur when the Cassis camera system, in which he played a key role, was ...