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.
Less than a month after US astronomers postulated the existence of a ninth planet in the Solar System, a French team managed to halve the possible search area. One of the researchers responsible for...
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2017 has just been awarded to Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne for their contribution to the first direct gravitational wave detection as part of the LIGO-...
In order to discover gravitational waves, detectors must be able to distinguish movements as small as one billionth the size of an atom. This major feat of sensitivity has been accomplished and...