Catégorie : CNRS
When science enters the Chauvet Cave
Thirty years after its discovery, an exhibition at the Cité des sciences et de l’industrie in Paris is featuring the “scientific adventure” behind the Chauvet Cave. Carole Fritz, the exhibition curator, provides an overview.
How speech comes to children
Before going to school to learn how to read and write their language, children first manage to understand and then speak it. How are they able to do so, almost all of them spontaneously, without a teacher or instruction?
Infrasound, sound waves that nothing can stop
What do a wind turbine, an ocean swell, and a volcanic eruption have in common? All three emit infrasound, or sound whose frequency is below 20 hertz. These sound waves, which are wrongly considered to be inaudible, can travel around the Earth multiple…
How to speak to extraterrestrials?
Interview with the linguist Frédéric Landragin, who recently published a short guide on interstellar communication.
Why birds do not fall while sleeping
The only permanent bipeds of the animal kingdom alongside humans, birds have an extraordinary sense of balance. How do these direct descendants of the dinosaurs maintain this stability, especially when sleeping? Scientists recently succeeded in solving…
Breathing life back into Antiquity
Cities, landscapes, monuments, even human figures: the watercolours of the architect and archaeologist Jean-Claude Golvin are an invitation to immerse ourselves in the everyday life of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian Antiquity.
Was Toumaï a biped?
The fossils of this primate, which were discovered in the early 2000s and date back 7 million years, remain the subject of intense debate, notably as to whether they should be considered part of the human lineage.
Cultural property on the path to restitution
With the release of the documentary film Dahomey, which follows France’s restitution of twenty-six works of art to Benin, various research teams continue to work on the return of African cultural property to their communities of origin.
Nations in the line of sight of international law
As the International Criminal Court considers a request to issue an arrest warrant against Israel’s prime minister and three Hamas officials for crimes against humanity, Raphaëlle Nollez-Goldbach, a specialist in the subject, looks back on the very you…
A nose for smell disorders
By depriving them more or less temporarily of their sense of smell, the Covid-19 pandemic made thousands of people abruptly realise the importance of their olfactory system. Research is now trying to decipher the causes of anosmia and to improve its tr…
Planet 9, do you copy?
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 debated, a recent study claims that the absence of su…
Mai-Anh Ngo, sports and equal rights champion
Two weeks after the Olympic Games, Paris is hosting the 2024 Paralympics. A multi-medallist para-swimmer, France’s national karate kata champion in 2022 and a lawyer specialising in sports and disability law, Mai-Anh Ngo carried the Paralympic flame on…
Mai-Anh Ngo, lawyer and “hyperactive PRM”
A multi-medallist para-swimmer, France’s national karate kata champion in 2022 and a lawyer specialising in sports and disability law, Mai-Anh Ngo will carry the Paralympic flame on 25 August.
Marseille liberated!
Julia Pirotte, a photojournalist and resistance fighter, documented the first day of the Marseille uprising on 21 August, 1944, wielding her camera alongside the freedom fighters. Through her images, the historian Claire Miot recounts this little-known…
Ancient Olympic fans also cheered for their heroes
As the 2024 Olympics in Paris have come to a close and the Paralympics are about to begin, the historian Jean-Paul Thuillier looks back at the origins of the games in Greco-Roman civilisation.
Ancient Olympic fans also cheered for their heroes
As the 2024 Olympics in Paris have come to a close and the Paralympics are about to begin, the historian Jean-Paul Thuillier looks back at the origins of the games in Greco-Roman civilisation.
The call of the forest
Forests cover a third of the world’s land surface. Although they provide us with invaluable services, they are now under so much pressure that we are faced with our own contradictions between their sometimes conflicting roles as sanctuaries for biodive…
Sylvie Rétaux, the all-terrain biologist
For the past 20 years, this specialist in developmental and evolutionary biology has been passionately dedicated to studying a small fish that lives in the waters of Central America. So much so that she took up speleology in order to explore deep caves…
Anthropology tracks the Invisible
Haunted houses, ghosts, spirits… From Mongolia to the United Kingdom, the anthropologist Grégory Delaplace investigates the various ways in which the dead manifest themselves to the living. He takes these “apparitions” seriously, refusing to prejudge w…
Largest-ever digital camera set to scan the Universe
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. Mounted on the telescope at the Vera C. Rubin Observa…
Single-cell technologies mark the dawn of a new era
Single-cell technologies for the analysis of genomic data enable scientists to better study tissue mechanisms and heterogeneity at the scale of a cell. They also generate masses of wide-ranging data that takes cell biology into a new era.
Screening 20 years of far right activism in Europe
For the European research project FARPO (Far Right Protest Observatory), the political science researchers Caterina Froio and Pietro Castelli Gattinara are gathering and analysing data on the extra-parliamentary activism of far right parties and moveme…
Screening 20 years of far right activism in Europe
For the European research project FARPO (Far Right Protest Observatory), the political science researchers Caterina Froio and Pietro Castelli Gattinara are gathering and analysing data on the extra-parliamentary activism of far right parties and moveme…
Innovation hat trick
Cyril Aymonier, Lydéric Bocquet and Eleni Diamanti are the three recipients of the CNRS 2024 Innovation Medal, which rewards male and female scientists whose research has led to groundbreaking technological, therapeutic or social innovation.
Carbon sinks, our climate’s saving grace
Each year, some 40 billion tonnes of CO₂, one of the main greenhouse gases, are released into the atmosphere. A significant proportion of these is captured by the oceans, vegetation and the soil. The CNRS scientists are trying to better understand thes…
French-Chinese satellite to unlock the secrets of gamma-ray bursts
On 22 June, a Chinese Long March 2C rocket launched the SVOM satellite, carrying two French-designed instruments, into orbit. The mission’s goals are to investigate the mechanism of gamma-ray bursts and carry out indirect surveys of the intergalactic m…
Russian propaganda floods Europe’s social networks
As the European elections draw near, Paul Bouchaud, a specialist in algorithms, shows that Meta (the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) is not preventing pro-Russian propaganda from flooding its platforms with political messages.
Astronomy through the back door
Alessandro Morbidelli is a specialist in the evolution and formation of planetary systems, and holds the planetary formation Chair at the Collège de France. The astrophysicist looks back on his career, which has taken him from Italy to the origins of l…
Reaching for the Moon for the sake of humanity
The “Sanctuary on the Moon” project, launched nearly ten years ago, aims to send a collection of discs containing a vast body of knowledge and material evidence of human civilisation to the Moon.
The long-lost sarcophagus of Ramses II has finally been found
Solving a long-standing mystery, the sarcophagus of Ramses II has finally been identified based on a piece of granite discovered in Abydos, Egypt… in 2009. Recent analyses of the enigmatic fragment by the Egyptologist Frédéric Payraudeau confirm that i…
The long-lost sarcophagus of Ramses II has finally been found
Solving a long-standing mystery, the sarcophagus of Ramses II has finally been identified based on a piece of granite discovered in Abydos, Egypt… in 2009. Recent analyses of the enigmatic fragment by the Egyptologist Frédéric Payraudeau confirm that i…
The silent heroins of World War II
As the Allies commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the CNRS historian Denis Peschanski takes a look behind the scenes and celebrates the vital yet long-neglected role of women and foreigners in the French Resistance.
Sicilian fault under close surveillance
Off the coast of the Sicilian town of Catania, an oceanographic mission studied the activity of North ALFEO, a submarine fault discovered only a decade ago. In partnership with the French daily LeMonde.fr, this report takes you on board the Atalante to…
Enter the matrices!
Whether it is performed by humans or computers, matrix multiplication is a tiresome task. Researchers are striving to reduce the time and number of steps required to solve such operations.
Is CO2 capture the key to carbon neutrality?
The European Commission is adamant: carbon capture and storage (CCS) will play a key role in the fight against climate change. But just how does CCS work? How widespread is this technology? And what obstacles stand in its way? CNRS News takes a closer …
When science breaks Olympic records
Posture, behaviour, preparation… Everything that athletes do is of interest to science. For the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the CNRS is pulling out all the stops to support the French competitors. The goal is to fine-tune their performance and help them …