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Several interacting exoplanets have already been spotted by satellites. But a new breakthrough has been achieved with, for the first time, the detection directly from the ground of an extrasolar system of this type.  An international collaboration including CNRS researchers 1 has discovered an unusual planetary system, dubbed WASP-148, using the French instrument SOPHIE at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence (CNRS/Aix-Marseille Université) .

An international collaboration bringing together over 200 scientists from 13 countries has shown that the very high-energy gamma-ray emission from quasars, galaxies with a highly energetic nucleus, is not concentrated in the region close to their central black hole but in fact extends over several thousand light-years along jets of plasma.

In conventional ultrasounds, variations in soft tissue structure distort ultrasound wavefronts. They blur the image and can hence prove detrimental to medical diagnosis. Researchers at the Institut Langevin (CNRS/ESPCI Paris-PSL) 1 have developed a new non-invasive ultrasound method that avoids such aberrations.

Two exceptional strains of tuberculosis, isolated from East African patients with multi-resistant forms of the disease, have been discovered thanks to the use of a new molecular test, Deeplex-MycTB 1. These strains belong to a so far unknown bacterial lineage, apparently limited to the African Great Lakes region.

In contrast to the prehistoric remains of the Near East, the megalithic monuments of Arabia remain largely unknown. These monumental structures, made of dry stone walls, still hold many secrets in terms of their construction, function and chronology. An international collaboration 1 of scientists from France, Saudi Arabia and Italy 2 , led by Olivia Munoz, a researcher at the CNRS, have discovered a 35-metre long triangular platform in the oasis of Dûmat al-Jandal (northern Saudi Arabia).

Scientists in the Sys2diag Laboratory (CNRS/ALCEN) and doctors from University Hospital (CHU) of Montpellier have presented the first results of a clinical trial on the EasyCov SARS-CoV-2 detection test. This shows satisfactory performance for a field test that solves a problem in situations where the RT-PCR test cannot be used.

A team led by scientists from the Institut Jacques Monod (CNRS/Université de Paris) 1 have shown that French prehistory was punctuated by two waves of migration: the first during the Neolithic period, about 6,300 years ago, the second during the Bronze Age, about 4,200 years ago.

Meiosis is essential to sexual reproduction. For almost 15 years, it has been commonly held that retinoic acid, a molecule derived from vitamin A, triggers meiosis in mammalian germ cells. Yet, in joint articles published in Science Advances ( 22 May 2020 ), researchers from the Institut de Biologie Valrose (CNRS / INSERM / Université Côte d'Azur) and the IGBMC (CNRS / INSERM / University of Strasbourg), with their colleagues, demonstrate that meiosis in mice begins and proceeds normally even in the absence of retinoic acid.

The surface of the planet Mars bears probable traces of -sedimentary volcanism-, a geological phenomenon that leads to the eruption of mud from underground. But how does a mixture of sediment and water behave in the open air on the Red Planet? Conditions there are extremely different from those on Earth - atmospheric pressure is 150 times lower and temperatures are generally negative.

Scientists from the CNRS and the ENS-PSL in France 1 and Monash University in Australia have shown that the brain suppresses information from the outside world, such as the sound of a conversation, during the sleep phase linked to dreaming. This ability be one of the protective mechanisms of dreams.

In the past few weeks, oil prices have fallen to record lows. This development was not predicted by the Hotelling rule, an equation proposed in 1931 that remains central to the economics of natural resources today. In an article published on 11 May 2020 in the Canadian Journal of Economics , economists Roberto Ferreira da Cunha, of the Berkeley Research Group, and Antoine Missemer, of the CNRS, present the results of a groundbreaking historical survey of documents from Harold Hotelling's archives.

The Mechanical Ventilator Milano (MVM), an open source ventilator to support patients severely ill with COVID-19, has moved from design to reality in six weeks, propelled by physicists specialised in dark matter who turned their attention away from unknown particles for this period. It has just been authorised by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as within the scope of the emergency use authorization for ventilators in intensive care.

Ka`epaoka`awela asteroid 1 surprised the world in 2018: it was the first object in the solar system that was demonstrated to be of extrasolar origin. But now those who discovered it have announced that it is not alone. Published in MNRAS on 23 April 2020, work by Fathi Namouni, a CNRS researcher in the Laboratoire Lagrange (CNRS/Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur/Université Côte d'Azur), and Helena Morais, researcher at UNESP in Brazil, proves that at least 19 other asteroids orbited another star before joining our system.

Earth's atmosphere is made up of 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen, a mixture that is unique in the Solar System 1 . The oxygen was produced by some of the first living organisms. But where did the nitrogen come from? Did it escape from Earth's mantle through volcanic activity? To try to answer these questions, Jabrane Labidi, a CNRS researcher at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (CNRS/IPGP/IGN) 2 and his colleagues collected samples of gas from several volcanic sites on our planet.

We live in a world of matter - because matter overtook antimatter , though they were both created in equal amounts by the Big Bang when our universe began. As featured on the cover of Nature on 16 April 2020, neutrinos and the associated antimatter particles, antineutrinos, are reported to have a high likelihood of differing behaviour that offers a promising path to explaining the asymmetry between matter and antimatter.

Ants are excellent navigators and always find their way back to the nest. But how do they react when an obstacle or a predator blocks their path? An international team including Antoine Wystrach, a CNRS researcher at the Research Centre on Animal Cognition (CNRS/Université Tou-louse III - Paul Sabatier), has shown that ants are capable of changing their familiar route to avoid traps thanks to an aversive learning mechanism: by associating visual cues with negative experiences, they can memorise potentially dangerous routes.

Contrary to popular belief, Neanderthals were no less technologically advanced than Homo sapiens . An international team, including researchers from the CNRS, have discovered the first evidence of cord making, dating back more than 40,000 years 1 , on aflint fragment from the prehistoric site of Abri du Maras in the south of France 2 .

The Arctic Ocean increasingly resembles the Atlantic, not only regarding its temperature but also the species that live there. However, scientists from the CNRS and Université Laval, Quebec 1 showed that an unprecedented strengthening of Atlantic currents is playing a major role in this phenomenon called 'Atlantification'.

A palette of colours on a silver plate: that is what the world's first colour photograph looks like. It was taken by French physicist Edmond Becquerel in 1848. His process was empirical, never explained, and quickly abandoned. A team at the Centre de Recherche sur la Conservation (CNRS/Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle/Ministère de la Culture) has now shone a light on this, in collaboration with the SOLEIL synchrotron and the Laboratoire de Physique des Solides (CNRS/Université Paris-Saclay) .

Usain Bolt's 200m record has not been beaten for ten years and Florence Griffith Joyner's for more than thirty years. And what about if the secret behind beating records was to use mathematics' Thanks to a mathematical model, Amandine Aftalion, CNRS researcher at the Centre d'analyse et de mathématique sociales (CNRS/EHESS), and Emmanuel Trélat, a Sorbonne Université researcher at the Laboratoire Jacques-Louis Lions (CNRS/Sorbonne Université/ Université de Paris) have proved that the geometry of athletic tracks could be optimised to improve records.