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-...
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...
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 unravel many of the unsolved mysteries of the Universe....
During his “miraculous year” 120 years ago, Albert Einstein explained the photoelectric effect, laying the foundations of quantum mechanics. The historian of science Christian Bracco provides an insight.
For nearly ten years, astronomers have been trying to demonstrate the existence of a massive object thought to be orbiting in the outer reaches of the Solar System. Although the hypothesis is widely...
It took hundreds of scientists worldwide, including several CNRS teams, to produce the world’s largest digital camera, the LSST (Legacy Survey of Space and Time), which has finally arrived in Chile....