How to imagine the universe?

(Replay)

Audio 48:30

The diffuse light of the Andromeda galaxy comes from the hundreds of billions of stars that make it up.

© NASA / Robert Gendler

By: Caroline Lachowsky

50 min

How to imagine the universe?

From the origins: the Big Bang and the birth of galaxies, its expansion, to the topography of exoplanets that we are constantly discovering tens, even thousands of light years around suns other than ours .

How to apprehend such a finite space-time?

infinite ?

Knowing that we do not know the material that composes it and that each new window of observation in astrophysics opens up new questions and staggering new hypotheses such as that of multi-universes and other forms of extraterrestrial life.

Where are we exactly?

Why our imagination is always less vast than the cosmos? Françoise Combes received the CNRS gold medal in September 2020Let's take stock of the progress of our knowledge in cosmology and the extent of our ignorance.

Publicity

With:

  • Françoise Combes

    , astrophysicist and professor at the Collège de France in the “

    Galaxies and cosmology

    chair

    .

    Author of Que sais-je?

    on

    The Big Bang.

  • Frédéric Schmidt,

    professor in

    geology of planetary surfaces, Paris-Saclay University.

To learn more about exoplanets:

  • an online 3D visualization tool to discover exoplanets

  • simulation videos here and here

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