The author of The Hobbit was also a poet and a medieval philologist who, as part of the process of creating the realm of Middle Earth, also invented highly elaborate imaginary languages. Charles Delattre, a specialist in Greco-Roman languages, literature and mythology, and a contributor to a...
Article
05.22.2017
The first material of its kind, with a thickness of just one atom, graphene has opened the way to the development of other ultra-thin substances. Now being produced and studied in the laboratory, these new materials could find a wide range of applications in...
Article
05.17.2017
Neuroimmunology—or the study of interactions between the nervous and immune systems—is still in its infancy, but it already holds great therapeutic promise, Jean-Philippe Herbeuval and Nikaïa Smith explain.
Opinion
05.18.2017
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Video
03.29.2017
Sofia is a Boeing 747 like no other. Run by NASA and the DLR, the German space agency, this aircraft was specially modified to accommodate a telescope. Come on board with astrophysicist Olivier...
Article
02.22.2017
Seven Earth-sized planets have been detected orbiting Trappist-1, an ultra-cool dwarf star in our galactic neighborhood. Some of them appear to be potentially habitable. The latest results of this...
Article
11.03.2016
Keenly awaited by the astronomy community, the ALMA interferometer observatory is expected to attain full capacity in 2018. Meanwhile, this exceptional instrument is already doing great science.
Article
09.27.2016
Astrophysicist and comet specialist Anny-Chantal Levasseur-Regourd has been involved in the Rosetta project since its early stages. She shares her insight on this extraordinary space mission which is...
Article
09.13.2016
The Gaia mission team unveiled its catalogue of celestial bodies in our galaxy. This colossal inventory charts the positions and luminosities of over 1 billion objects in the Milky Way and beyond.
Infographics
08.12.2016
Twenty years ago, in October 1995, a team of astrophysicists led by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz at the Haute-Provence Observatory in southeastern France became the first to formally discover an...
Article
07.04.2016
The aura of mystery surrounding Mars has long been intensified by its curious pair of moons: Phobos and Deimos, whose origins have remained clouded until now.
Article
06.27.2016
More than 20 years after Galileo, it is now Juno's turn to observe the largest planet of our Solar System. This close encounter will go beyond the simple observation of its moons to gather...
06.15.2016
Less than four months after the first-ever detection of gravitational waves, a new merger of black holes has been observed by the LIGO-Virgo collaboration.
06.10.2016
A few months after the first detection of gravitational waves, the success of the Lisa Pathfinder mission paves the way for an ambitious space project that will make it possible to observe the...
05.02.2016
New research indicates that even in small quantities, liquid water on Mars—which would immediately boil and evaporate—may considerably alter the surface morphology, creating very different structures...
04.20.2016
The Microscope satellite was placed in orbit this April. Its mission: test once more the principle of equivalence, a pillar of the theory of general relativity that postulates that all objects fall...