On 14 September, 2015, the international LIGO/Virgo collaboration detected the very first gravitational wave signal, a tiny distortion of spacetime predicted by Einstein, in this case produced by the merger of two black holes. The CNRS astrophysicist Marie-Anne Bizouard explains how this discovery...
Article
11.03.2025
In the French-Belgian film "The Residence", recently released in a number of European countries and Brazil, a novelist interacts with an artificial intelligence system. The robotics researcher Catherine Pélachaud explains how a seemingly personal...
Article
10.28.2025
In August 2025, the Geneva Summit on plastic pollution once again failed to reach agreement on an international treaty, due in particular to a lack of consensus over recycling and its limits. This issue was the subject of a recent collective scientific...
Article
10.27.2025
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Article
10.22.2025
The huge fires that burn down millions of hectares of forest in North America every year have an impact on the other side of the Atlantic. Plumes of smoke and various other pollutants have been detected in the skies over France and beyond, explains the...
Article
10.20.2025
The myth of Africa as a wild, enchanting continent conceals a reality of nature under glass orchestrated by Western experts, to the detriment of local populations. The historian Guillaume Blanc recounts this little-known story.
Article
10.15.2025
A previously unpublished sonnet by Cervantes, recently discovered in an account of Neapolitan festivals, reveals the exceptional socio-professional status of the author of "Don Quixote" in the Renaissance.
Article
10.09.2025
Why is the outermost part of the Sun's atmosphere, the corona, so much hotter than its surface? Ten years after formulating a hypothesis based on a numerical model, CNRS researchers have now used direct observations of the star's surface to confirm...
Article
10.03.2025
The concept of an “energy transition” is misleading, states the CNRS science historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz. He explains why coal and oil never replaced wood, and that the fight against climate...
Article
09.29.2025
Oil isn't the only treasure hidden in the Arabian desert. French-Saudi archaeological teams are gradually unearthing a hitherto unsuspected heritage, including urban development, languages,...
Article
09.24.2025
Due to global warming and ever greater human activity, phytoplankton blooms are becoming increasingly frequent in lakes and oceans. Their impact on health, the economy and the environment is already...
Article
09.18.2025
Forty-four years after the earliest cases of AIDS were identified, the historian Marion Aballéa retraces the social, economic, cultural, scientific and public health history of the first pandemic...
Article
09.12.2025
With large-scale observation campaigns, innovative data analysis methods and theoretical advances on all fronts, astrophysics and cosmology are entering a high-precision era with the potential to...
Article
09.10.2025
By combining theoretical abstraction with practical impact, Stéphane Mallat has left a lasting mark on mathematics and computer science. From the JPEG 2000 image compression standard to the...
Article
09.01.2025
Few weapons are available to fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which continue to cause millions of deaths. However, scientists are currently resuscitating a century-old solution, bacteriophages,...
Article
08.07.2025
The disappearance of non-avian dinosaurs didn’t mark the end of giant organisms in the living world. From enormous mammals to oversized insects and plants, CNRS News takes a closer look at some of...
07.24.2025
Steven Spielberg’s "Jaws" is back in cinemas worldwide 50 years after its original release. The specialist Éric Clua talks about the negative image of sharks conveyed by the film and a new...
07.22.2025
Digital cemeteries, deadbots… Is the development of digital tools changing the way we cope with death and mourning, as depicted in David Cronenberg’s latest film "The Shrouds"?
Slideshow
07.17.2025
The early 20th-century artist Robert Delaunay began painting at a pivotal moment in art history, namely during the chemical industry revolution, when the number of pigments available on the market...
Article
07.16.2025
A name frequently associated with plate tectonics is that of the German meteorologist Alfred Wegener. However, another one would deserve recognition: that of the American cartographer Marie Tharp,...