With the Académie des Sciences in 2013-2014

TRANSMITTING KNOWLEDGE

Public sessions, civic culture

The unprecedented technological rise the world has been experiencing since the middle of the last century has made more complex

society’s relations to science: innovation seduces but inspires fear, ethical questioning is now involved in every process of scientific

research. In such a context, the Académie des Sciences invites the broad, enlightened public to conferences presented by the great

figures of science, aimed at providing topical knowledge on major science themes bearing strong societal repercussions

Juggling with Photons in a Box

In 2012, the Nobel Prize in physics singled out research projects dealing with the control and non-destructive handling of material or

light particles. The member of the Académie des Sciences Serge Haroche drew an account of the experiments which awarded him

this Nobel Prize and, in particular, of the results he obtained with small systems of a few photons in quantum superpositions of states

that have been called “cats of Schrödinger” out of reference to the famous thought experiment the Austrian physicist had imagined

to describe how strange the microscopic world was (8 January 2013).

Is Solar Energy the Energy of the Future?

To help better understand the issues at stake in the debate on energy

transition, the member of the Académie des Sciences Didier Roux reviewed

the evolution of technologies that make it possible to transform solar energy

into electricity, either through heat (concentration solar plants) or directly

(photovoltaic modules) (15 January 2013).

The Microbiota, an (Almost) Absolute Symbiosis

Every multicellular organisms host microbial communities. In the course of the

evolution, such an interface has given rise to a symbiosis whose mutualistic

dimension is just beginning to appear. The member of the Académie des

Sciences Philippe Sansonetti shows how the human microbiota is involved in

such major functions as immunity, nutrition or metabolism and how it could

also be so in the late phases of brain and vascular development or even

epithelium and other tissue repair (19 March 2013).