Press release

Published on June 25, 2025
Press release CNRS / Observatoire de Paris - PSL / UGA

► One of the main objectives of contemporary astronomy is the search for exoplanets, which provide a better understanding of how planetary systems form. ► For the first time since its launch in 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope has enabled the discovery of a new exoplanet; it is located in the debris disk of a young star. ► It is the lightest planet observed by direct imagery, and represents an important stage in the imaging of less and less massive planets that are more comparable to the (…)

Published on February 20, 2025

Since 2000, the world’s glaciers have lost 5% of their initial volume, and 273 billion tonnes of ice are disappearing every year - the equivalent of 3 Olympic swimming pools per second. These are the results of an in-depth study of the global evolution of glaciers (excluding the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets) between 2000 and 2023, based for the first time on a combination of field measurements and satellite observations. This unprecedented study was carried out by the Glambie], made up (…)

Published on October 11, 2024

A new study, supported by the Make Our Planet Great Again program as part of the HOTCLIM project, and conducted by an international scientific team led by the Institute of Environmental Geosciences in Grenoble (IGE – CNRS/INRAE/IRD/UGA - Grenoble INP-UGA) in collaboration with the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences, LSCE (CEA/CNRS/UVSQ), the University of New South Wales, and the University of Bern, has revealed new rapid variations within global fluctuations of atmospheric (…)

Published on August 05, 2024
Press release Paleotechnic / INRAE / CNRS / Université Grenoble Alpes / Université d’Orleans

A collaborative effort between the newly established research institute, Paleotechnic, and several national laboratories (INRAE, University of Orléans) has led to the discovery of a dam, a water treatment facility, and a hydraulic elevator, which would have enabled the construction of the Step Pyramid of Saqqara.

Published on April 16, 2024
ESA

Wading through the wealth of data from ESA’s Gaia mission, scientists have uncovered a ‘sleeping giant’. A large black hole, with a mass of nearly 33 times the mass of the Sun, was hiding in the constellation Aquila, less than 2000 light-years from Earth. This is the first time a black hole of stellar origin this big has been spotted within the Milky Way. So far, black holes of this type have only been observed in very distant galaxies. The discovery challenges our understanding of how (…)

Published on April 10, 2024
Université libre de Bruxelles

Global warming results in the dissapearance of meteorites, and as such reduces our access to extraterrestrial material... A team of researchers, involved researcher from Institut des géosciences de l’environnement (IGE-OSUG, CNRS/UGA/IRD/INRAE/Grenoble INP - UGA) and co-led by ULB and its Laboratoire de glaciologie (GLACIOL), publishes a study in Nature Climate Change on this unexpected impact of climate change, which is hampering our knowledge of the solar system.
Antarctica harbors (…)

Published on March 07, 2024
ESO Press release

In a series of studies, a team of astronomers, involved scientists from institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble (IPAG-OSUG, CNRS/UGA), has shed new light on the fascinating and complex process of planet formation. The stunning images, captured using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile, represent one of the largest ever surveys of planet-forming discs. The research brings together observations of more than 80 young stars that might (…)

Published on March 05, 2024

In Antarctica, the third drilling campaign of the Beyond EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica) - Oldest Ice project, at the remote field site Little Dome C, has been successfully completed. The goal to go back 1.5 million years in time to reconstruct past temperatures and greenhouse gas concentrations, through the analysis of an ice core extracted from the depths of the ice sheet, becomes each year more real.
Funded by the European Commission with 11 million euros and (…)

Published on November 13, 2023
Alert press CNRS

The largest floating ice shelves in the polar ice sheet have lost more than a third of their volume since 1978. In a study to be published on 7 November in Nature Communications, scientists from the Institut des géosciences de l’environnement (IGE), alongside their Danish and American colleagues, have established that most of this thinning is due to the rise in surrounding ocean temperatures, which causes the glaciers’ floating extensions to melt. Until now, the glaciers in this region were (…)

Published on September 21, 2023
CNRS Press release

The CNRS Gold Medal, one of the most prestigious French scientific distinctions, has been awarded to the ecologist Sandra Lavorel. A specialist in the functioning of ecosystems, during her 30 years as a CNRS researcher she has revealed the contributions that biodiversity makes to human life, as well as the societal and economic impact of its alteration by environmental changes. She regularly contributes her expertise to public policy-making. The CNRS Gold Medal, along with a €50,000 prize (…)