As indicators of the degradation of permafrost – permanently frozen soil – in mountainous areas, molards are receiving special focus from researchers. In his laboratory in Caen (northwestern France), Calvin Beck is attempting to recreate these cones of debris from landslides.
At a ceremony held in Paris recenlty, the biologist Edith Heard was handed the CNRS Gold Medal, one of the most prestigious French scientific distinctions, for her outstanding research on epigenetics and X-chromosome inactivation.
A genuine technological gem, the James Webb Space Telescope has been exploring the smallest nooks of the Universe over the last two years. From the birth of planets and the first galaxies to the atmospheric composition of exoplanets, the space observatory’s...
Over 5 million years ago, the Mediterranean Sea dried up, giving way to a salt flat stretching as far as the eye could see. A look back at the Mediterranean basin’s last great hydrological crisis.
While very useful in ecosystems, mosquitoes tend to ruin the lives of humans. A CNRS team has even recently calculated how much these dipterans cost society, primarily due to the diseases they transmit.
Alexandre Grothendieck, who is considered one of the founders of modern algebraic geometry, left a considerable mark on mathematics through his genius and his reflections on his time. Ten years after his death, the mathematician Leila Schneps revisits his...
In the aftermath of the fire, the French Ministry of Culture and the CNRS implemented a vast scientific effort to support the restoration of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. One of the projects was creating a virtual twin of the monument. A discussion with...
At the head of a major research programme, Anne-Madeleine Goulet has unearthed a buried treasure from Roman archives: one hundred years of prolific creation on the stage from the seventeenth to the...
Astrochemistry, a relatively new field, focuses on exploring chemistry in interstellar spaces to uncover insights about the origins of life on Earth. This discipline has seen significant advancements...
Small or large, equipped with rotors or fixed wings, drones are gradually becoming part of daily life for CNRS scientists. They offer invaluable help, making it possible to see what was heretofore...
After Commodus in Gladiator, Caracalla plays the new crazy and cruel emperor in Gladiator II. A very dark image of this ancient sovereign, with current research striving to rehabilitate his political...
After more than nine years of research at the Grotte Mandrin site in the Drôme, the archaeologist Ludovic Slimak and his team have confirmed that they have unearthed the remains of a Neanderthal,...
At the cutting edge of robotics, the teams at the Joint Robotics Laboratory (JRL) in Japan recently worked on Friends, a humanoid personal assistance robot. Friends is as effective when autonomous as...
Thirty years after its discovery, an exhibition at the Cité des sciences et de l’industrie in Paris is featuring the “scientific adventure” behind the Chauvet Cave. Carole Fritz, the exhibition...
Before going to school to learn how to read and write their language, children first manage to understand and then speak it. How are they able to do so, almost all of them spontaneously, without a...
What do a wind turbine, an ocean swell, and a volcanic eruption have in common? All three emit infrasound, or sound whose frequency is below 20 hertz. These sound waves, which are wrongly considered...
The only permanent bipeds of the animal kingdom alongside humans, birds have an extraordinary sense of balance. How do these direct descendants of the dinosaurs maintain this stability, especially...
Cities, landscapes, monuments, even human figures: the watercolours of the architect and archaeologist Jean-Claude Golvin are an invitation to immerse ourselves in the everyday life of Greek, Roman,...