According to the jury of the Informationsdiensts Wissenschaft (idw) Award for Science Communication, the three best press releases of 2022 came from the press offices of ETH Zurich, the Alfred Wegener Institute and Goethe University Frankfurt. The award recognises press releases that are of a high level of technical professionalism, have outstanding news value and are scientifically relevant. Not only was the quality high this competition year, so was the participation: A record number of 115 press offices had applied for the award.

The third place went to the press release “Cosmic chocolate pralines: general neutron star structure revealed” by the Public Relations & Communications office at Goethe University. ELEMENTS’ science communication officer Dr. Phyllis Mania based the text on an inspiring quote by spokesperson Luciano Rezzolla, who had compared the inner structure of neutron stars to different types of chocolate pralines.

Jury member Mike Zeitz (Spektrum der Wissenschaft) said:

“It is a special art to make basic research palatable. Goethe University took the assignment literally and embedded a hard nut from nuclear and astrophysics in the everyday favourite chocolate. The chocolate metaphor helped to illustrate complex theoretical findings on the structure of neutron stars, and thus appealed not only to the jury but also to a wide variety of international media. The graphics provided supported the imagination, even if people from outside the field might not have been able to follow the well-structured but sometimes complicated content in the text. The appetite had long since been whetted and inspiration for one’s own adaptations awakened – the supreme tasks of every press release.”