She’s the boss—but why? A large-scale study of one-on-one conflicts between members of Tanzanian spotted-hyena communities, commonly dominated by female individuals, now presents empirical evidence that she-hyena authority comes down to family and social ties.
Article
11.19.2018
Contrary to belief, it only takes a few seconds for a memory to form. Once recorded, it can be modified or made inaccessible, but it does not vanish. Pascale Gisquet-Verrier and David Riccio talk about their recent work, which revisits the dogma of memory...
Opinion
11.20.2018
Ever since the concept of prehistory was invented, scientists have made a clear distinction between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, between modern and non-modern humans. Yet according to the prehistoric archaeologist Nicolas Teyssandier, it is this notion of “...
Opinion
11.15.2018
Our topics
11.14.2018
After having received the Gruber Prize in Cosmology last May, the astrophysicist Jean-Loup Puget, emeritus senior researcher at the CNRS, was awarded the Shaw Prize in Astronomy on September 26 in...
Article
10.17.2018
Known since antiquity, Mercury has not yet delivered all its secrets. The international mission BepiColombo will study the planet's surface and compare its magnetic field with that of the Earth.
08.14.2018
Although its existence has been suspected for more than seventy years, the hunt for dark matter continues, as physicists around the world attempt to track it down. Or are they all just chasing an...
Article
07.30.2018
The initial data gathered by the instrument GRAVITY, for a star near the giant black hole located at the center of our galaxy, confirms the predictions of general relativity in the most extreme...
Article
07.02.2018
The Sun is one of the final unknown frontiers in our Solar System. This August, a probe was launched to observe this star in unprecedented detail, and closer than ever before. The objective is to...
Article
05.21.2018
The quirky behavior of an asteroid that goes against the flow of most other celestial bodies in our Solar System prompted a French-Brazilian scientific duo to delve into its origins. And discover an...
05.09.2018
The world's most reflective mirrors, which reflect 99.9999% of incident light, were developed by a French laboratory. Discover the manufacturing secrets of these essential components of...
Article
05.02.2018
The InSight international space mission which launched May 5 from California is scheduled to land on the surface of the Red Planet on November 26. By studying for the first time the seismic waves on...
Article
01.12.2018
With their small size of several tens of centimeters and relatively low cost, nanosatellites—known as “CubeSats”—open up new scientific vistas. PicSat, launched on January 12, will be the first such...
12.14.2017
On December 14, 2017, Alain Brillet and Thibault Damour received the CNRS Gold Medal, France's highest scientific distinction, during a ceremony at the Collège de France in Paris. Together, the...
12.04.2017
The first results of the Microscope experiment have just been unveiled. Its objective is to test the equivalence principle, which states that in a vacuum, all bodies fall with the same speed....
Article
10.16.2017
A series of observations on an unprecedented scale combining detection of gravitational waves and electromagnetic signals at all wavelengths sheds light on unsolved mysteries of astrophysics.