Notre Dame: restoring eternity

In the aftermath of the fire, the French Ministry of Culture and the CNRS implemented a vast scientific effort to support the restoration of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. One of the projects was creating a virtual twin of the monument. A discussion with Livio De Luca, the coordinator of the digital working group.

“Magnificence” on stage: Rome 1644-1740

At the head of a major research programme, Anne-Madeleine Goulet has unearthed a buried treasure from Roman archives: one hundred years of prolific creation on the stage from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century, under the auspices of an aristocracy seeking prestige.

Who was Caracalla, the cruel emperor of Gladiator II?

After Commodus in Gladiator, Caracalla plays the new crazy and cruel emperor in Gladiator II. A very dark image of this ancient sovereign, with current research striving to rehabilitate his political and military endeavours.

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?

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.

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.

How to speak to extraterrestrials?

Interview with the linguist Frédéric Landragin, who recently published a short guide on interstellar communication.

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 times, and are of interest to both physicists and doctors. A closer look.