In addition there are 500 graduate students. Research in natural sciences is by tradition international. This is also the case with the faculty in Lund. Geologists comb the Arctic and Antarctica for fossils and rocks. Astronomers go to the Canary Islands and to Chile, to use the most powerful telescopes.
Physical geographers make their way to Sudan to check their satellite data.
The University has several departments that bring together engineers and natural scientists. The Department of Physics, for example, includes five divisions in the Faculty of Science and four in the Institute of Technology. Research today is investigating the structure of the exteriors of atoms by analysing the spectra emitted by atoms in the form of visible light and ultraviolet and infrared radiation. When the Hubble Space Telescope was put into orbit in 1990, NASA needed expertise of a very special kind in atomic physics to interpret certain observations. They found that expertise in Lund, and the two institutions are continuing intensive cooperation.