Career - May 24
Aix-Marseille University and all the partners of the A*Midex consortium celebrate 10 years of the Initiative of Excellence
Aix-Marseille University and all the partners of the A*Midex consortium celebrate 10 years of the Initiative of Excellence
Innovation - May 6
Launch of 3ALP, a public-private laboratory dedicated to the aluminium of the future
Launch of 3ALP, a public-private laboratory dedicated to the aluminium of the future
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Astronomy / Space Science - 12.05.2022 
First image of the black hole at the heart of our galaxy
Within the EHT collaboration, the CNRS and IRAM participated in the creation of a first image of the black hole Sagittarius A*. Astronomers have unveiled the first image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy. This result provides overwhelming evidence that the object is indeed a black hole and yields valuable clues about the workings of such giants, which are thought to reside at the centre of most galaxies.
Astronomy / Space Science - 28.04.2022 
Discovery of 30 exocomets in a young planetary system
For the past thirty years, the star - Pictoris has fascinated astronomers because it enables them to observe a planetary system in the process of formation. It is made up of at least two young planets, and also contains comets, which were detected as early as 1987. These were the first comets ever observed around a star other than the Sun.
Astronomy / Space Science - Earth Sciences - 01.04.2022 
Perseverance records the first ever sounds from Mars
Using a microphone developed in France, the Perseverance rover has recorded the first ever sounds from Mars audible to the human ear. By analysing these sounds, scientists have been able to find out more about the physical characteristics of the Martian atmosphere, and in particular about the speed of sound and its attenuation there.
Astronomy / Space Science - 15.02.2022 
Discovery of a third moon orbiting the asteroid (130) Elektra
Publication of the CRAL in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics on Fabruary 8, 2022. CNRS-INSU communication on February 14, 2022. Context . Extreme adaptive optics systems, such as the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch facility (SPHERE), push forward the limits in high contrast and high resolution in direct imaging.
Astronomy / Space Science - 07.02.2022 
New calculations of worldwide glacial flows and volumes
Many mountain populations-in the Andes or Himalayas, for example-rely on glaciers for their water. Yet changes in glacial water reserves, like predictions of sea level rise, greatly depend on glacier volume and thickness, both of which have been poorly evaluated-until now. By analysing over 800,000 pairs of satellite images, researchers from the CNRS, Université Grenoble Alpes (France), 1 and Dartmouth College (USA) have established the first global map of flow velocities for 98% (>200,000) of the world's glaciers.
Astronomy / Space Science - 02.02.2022 
Cosmic water cloud reveals the temperature of the early Universe
The temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation, a remnant of the energy unleashed by the Big Bang, has for the first time been measured at a very early stage in the history of the Universe, a mere 880 million years after it first formed. This remarkable result was achieved by an international group of astrophysicists who used NOEMA to observe a massive starburst galaxy, HFLS3, which was active at that time in cosmic history.
Astronomy / Space Science - Earth Sciences - 13.01.2022 
A new model for the formation of the lunar crust
In a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters, two scientists - Chloé Michaut from Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon 1 and Jerome A. Neufeld from University of Cambridge 2 , propose a new model of crystallization of the lunar magma ocean where the crystals remain suspended in the lunar interior and the formation of the crust only begins once a critical crystal content is reached.
Astronomy / Space Science - 05.01.2022 
Discovery of the least ’metallic’ stellar structure in the Milky Way
98.5% of the Sun is made up of two light chemical elements, hydrogen and helium, while the remaining 1.5% consists of other heavier elements such as carbon, oxygen, and iron. The abundance of these heavier elements in a star is called its 'metallicity', and varies from star to star. It now turns out that our Galaxy is home to a stellar structure uniquely made of stars with extremely low metallicity, with a heavy element content 2,500 times lower than that of the Sun.
Physics - Astronomy / Space Science - 13.12.2021 
Einstein wins in the end (once again)
Einstein's theory of gravity, general relativity, has not been disproven once in over a century, despite relentless efforts from scientists to find its faults. Pulsars are stars toward the end of the stellar life cycle, emitting radio waves that sweep through space like a lighthouse: they can be detected by radio telescopes in the form of highly regular flashes.
Astronomy / Space Science - Earth Sciences - 07.10.2021 
Mars: first results from the Perseverance rover
Images from Perseverance's French-American instrument SuperCam show that the crater where the rover landed once contained a lake. The SuperCam observations also identified strata containing boulders, related to a major change in the hydrological regime. This study, led by a French researcher, will facilitate selection of the most suitable areas for Perseverance to collect samples.
Astronomy / Space Science - 06.10.2021 
Why there is hardly any dust on some asteroids
There was a surprise in store for NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft as it prepared to land on asteroid Bennu in October 2020 in order to collect samples. Contrary to what astronomers believed, the asteroid's surface was not covered with a layer of fine dust, called regolith. This dust, which blankets the Moon and some asteroids, is formed when thermal shock and meteorite impacts break up surface rocks.
Astronomy / Space Science - Physics - 16.09.2021
Astronomy / Space Science - Earth Sciences - 10.08.2021
Astronomy / Space Science - Earth Sciences - 22.07.2021 
InSight Mission: Mars unveiled
Using information obtained from around a dozen earthquakes detected on Mars by the Very Broad Band SEIS seismometer, developed in France, the international team of NASA's InSight mission has unveiled the internal structure of Mars.
Astronomy / Space Science - Physics - 29.06.2021 
The final dance of mixed neutron star-black hole pairs
Gravitational wave detectors have observed a new type of cataclysmic event in the cosmos: the merger of a neutron star with a black hole. The phenomenon was detected twice in January 2020. Several hypotheses could explain the existence of such mixed pairs. Further observations will be needed in order to settle the question.
Astronomy / Space Science - Physics - 11.06.2021 
French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet to continue experiments on foams
Studying how liquid foams evolve over time is difficult, if not impossible, on Earth because of gravity. The FOAM-C experiment, which began in 2020, was designed to study liquid foams in zero gravity on board the ISS. New samples will be set up by French astronaut Thomas Pesquet on Friday, June 11. The FOAM-C experiment studies the properties of liquid foams in zero gravity.
Astronomy / Space Science - Environment - 08.04.2021 
More than 5,000 tons of extraterrestrial dust fall to Earth each year
Every year, our planet encounters dust from comets 1 and asteroid 2 . These interplanetary dust particles pass through our atmosphere and give rise to shooting stars. Some of them reach the ground in the form of micrometeorites. An international program 3 conducted for nearly 20 years by scientists from the CNRS, the Université Paris-Saclay and the National museum of natural history 4 with the support of the French polar institute, has determined that 5,200 tons per year of these micrometeorites reach the ground.
Astronomy / Space Science - Physics - 24.03.2021 
Astronomers Image Magnetic Fields at the Edge of M87’s Black Hole
Within the EHT collaboration, the CNRS and IRAM participated in the creation of a new image of the black hole in the M87 galaxy. Produced in so-called "polarized" light, this image makes it possible to observe the magnetic field and to better understand the physics around black holes. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, who produced the first ever image of a black hole , has revealed today a new view of the massive object at the centre of the M87 galaxy: how it looks in polarised light.
Astronomy / Space Science - Physics - 18.03.2021 
First images of the cosmic web reveal a myriad of unsuspected dwarf galaxies
The MUSE instrument on the Very Large Telescope has captured an image of several filaments in the early Universe... ... revealing the unexpected presence of billions of dwarf galaxies in the filaments Although the filaments of gas in which galaxies are born have long been predicted by cosmological models, we have so far had no real images of such objects.
Astronomy / Space Science - Physics - 18.02.2021
Astronomy/Space Science
Results 1 - 20 of 87.
Within the EHT collaboration, the CNRS and IRAM participated in the creation of a first image of the black hole Sagittarius A*. Astronomers have unveiled the first image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy. This result provides overwhelming evidence that the object is indeed a black hole and yields valuable clues about the workings of such giants, which are thought to reside at the centre of most galaxies.
For the past thirty years, the star - Pictoris has fascinated astronomers because it enables them to observe a planetary system in the process of formation. It is made up of at least two young planets, and also contains comets, which were detected as early as 1987. These were the first comets ever observed around a star other than the Sun.
Using a microphone developed in France, the Perseverance rover has recorded the first ever sounds from Mars audible to the human ear. By analysing these sounds, scientists have been able to find out more about the physical characteristics of the Martian atmosphere, and in particular about the speed of sound and its attenuation there.
Publication of the CRAL in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics on Fabruary 8, 2022. CNRS-INSU communication on February 14, 2022. Context . Extreme adaptive optics systems, such as the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch facility (SPHERE), push forward the limits in high contrast and high resolution in direct imaging.
Many mountain populations-in the Andes or Himalayas, for example-rely on glaciers for their water. Yet changes in glacial water reserves, like predictions of sea level rise, greatly depend on glacier volume and thickness, both of which have been poorly evaluated-until now. By analysing over 800,000 pairs of satellite images, researchers from the CNRS, Université Grenoble Alpes (France), 1 and Dartmouth College (USA) have established the first global map of flow velocities for 98% (>200,000) of the world's glaciers.
The temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation, a remnant of the energy unleashed by the Big Bang, has for the first time been measured at a very early stage in the history of the Universe, a mere 880 million years after it first formed. This remarkable result was achieved by an international group of astrophysicists who used NOEMA to observe a massive starburst galaxy, HFLS3, which was active at that time in cosmic history.
In a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters, two scientists - Chloé Michaut from Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon 1 and Jerome A. Neufeld from University of Cambridge 2 , propose a new model of crystallization of the lunar magma ocean where the crystals remain suspended in the lunar interior and the formation of the crust only begins once a critical crystal content is reached.
98.5% of the Sun is made up of two light chemical elements, hydrogen and helium, while the remaining 1.5% consists of other heavier elements such as carbon, oxygen, and iron. The abundance of these heavier elements in a star is called its 'metallicity', and varies from star to star. It now turns out that our Galaxy is home to a stellar structure uniquely made of stars with extremely low metallicity, with a heavy element content 2,500 times lower than that of the Sun.
Einstein's theory of gravity, general relativity, has not been disproven once in over a century, despite relentless efforts from scientists to find its faults. Pulsars are stars toward the end of the stellar life cycle, emitting radio waves that sweep through space like a lighthouse: they can be detected by radio telescopes in the form of highly regular flashes.
Images from Perseverance's French-American instrument SuperCam show that the crater where the rover landed once contained a lake. The SuperCam observations also identified strata containing boulders, related to a major change in the hydrological regime. This study, led by a French researcher, will facilitate selection of the most suitable areas for Perseverance to collect samples.
There was a surprise in store for NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft as it prepared to land on asteroid Bennu in October 2020 in order to collect samples. Contrary to what astronomers believed, the asteroid's surface was not covered with a layer of fine dust, called regolith. This dust, which blankets the Moon and some asteroids, is formed when thermal shock and meteorite impacts break up surface rocks.
Part of the Universe’s missing matter found thanks to the MUSE instrument
CRAL publication in MNRAS , on September 16, 2021. CNRS press release on September 16, 2021. Galaxies can receive and exchange matter with their external environment thanks to the galactic winds created by stellar explosions. Thanks to the MUSE instrument from the Very Large Telescope at the ESO, an international research team, led on the French side by the CNRS and l'Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 , has mapped a galactic wind for the first time.
CRAL publication in MNRAS , on September 16, 2021. CNRS press release on September 16, 2021. Galaxies can receive and exchange matter with their external environment thanks to the galactic winds created by stellar explosions. Thanks to the MUSE instrument from the Very Large Telescope at the ESO, an international research team, led on the French side by the CNRS and l'Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 , has mapped a galactic wind for the first time.
Mars: first results from the Perseverance rover
Publication of LGL-TPE in Science on October 7, 2021. CNRS press release on October 7, 2021. The Perseverance rover has now confirmed the suitability of its landing site: Jezero crater really did contain a lake, into which a river flowed through a delta 3.6 billion years ago. Led by a CNRS researcher, the international team involved scientists in France from Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 and Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier , and published its findings on October 7 in Science.
Publication of LGL-TPE in Science on October 7, 2021. CNRS press release on October 7, 2021. The Perseverance rover has now confirmed the suitability of its landing site: Jezero crater really did contain a lake, into which a river flowed through a delta 3.6 billion years ago. Led by a CNRS researcher, the international team involved scientists in France from Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 and Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier , and published its findings on October 7 in Science.
Using information obtained from around a dozen earthquakes detected on Mars by the Very Broad Band SEIS seismometer, developed in France, the international team of NASA's InSight mission has unveiled the internal structure of Mars.
Gravitational wave detectors have observed a new type of cataclysmic event in the cosmos: the merger of a neutron star with a black hole. The phenomenon was detected twice in January 2020. Several hypotheses could explain the existence of such mixed pairs. Further observations will be needed in order to settle the question.
Studying how liquid foams evolve over time is difficult, if not impossible, on Earth because of gravity. The FOAM-C experiment, which began in 2020, was designed to study liquid foams in zero gravity on board the ISS. New samples will be set up by French astronaut Thomas Pesquet on Friday, June 11. The FOAM-C experiment studies the properties of liquid foams in zero gravity.
Every year, our planet encounters dust from comets 1 and asteroid 2 . These interplanetary dust particles pass through our atmosphere and give rise to shooting stars. Some of them reach the ground in the form of micrometeorites. An international program 3 conducted for nearly 20 years by scientists from the CNRS, the Université Paris-Saclay and the National museum of natural history 4 with the support of the French polar institute, has determined that 5,200 tons per year of these micrometeorites reach the ground.
Within the EHT collaboration, the CNRS and IRAM participated in the creation of a new image of the black hole in the M87 galaxy. Produced in so-called "polarized" light, this image makes it possible to observe the magnetic field and to better understand the physics around black holes. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, who produced the first ever image of a black hole , has revealed today a new view of the massive object at the centre of the M87 galaxy: how it looks in polarised light.
The MUSE instrument on the Very Large Telescope has captured an image of several filaments in the early Universe... ... revealing the unexpected presence of billions of dwarf galaxies in the filaments Although the filaments of gas in which galaxies are born have long been predicted by cosmological models, we have so far had no real images of such objects.
The Mars2020 Mission - Perseverance Rover Landing
Follow along live as the Perseverance rover lands on Mars, thanks to the SuperCam instrument on board which was co-developed by three research laboratories under the supervision of Sorbonne University. On Thursday, February 18, 2021, a little before 10:00 pm, the Perseverance rover will descend on Mars at more than 21,000 km/h.
Follow along live as the Perseverance rover lands on Mars, thanks to the SuperCam instrument on board which was co-developed by three research laboratories under the supervision of Sorbonne University. On Thursday, February 18, 2021, a little before 10:00 pm, the Perseverance rover will descend on Mars at more than 21,000 km/h.
Career - May 24
Aix-Marseille University and all the partners of the A*Midex consortium celebrate 10 years of the Initiative of Excellence
Aix-Marseille University and all the partners of the A*Midex consortium celebrate 10 years of the Initiative of Excellence
Innovation - May 6
Launch of 3ALP, a public-private laboratory dedicated to the aluminium of the future
Launch of 3ALP, a public-private laboratory dedicated to the aluminium of the future