cosmic anomalies

Aurélien Barrau

(Dunod, 208 pages, 2022)

Rights sold to Italy and Spain

Our understanding of the world and the universe today will not be that of tomorrow. Behind the scientific truism, exist all sorts of oddities, thorny enigmas and strangeness that slip into contemporary theories of physics and cosmology. Astrophysicist Aurélien Barrau investigates the anomalies that defy modern scientific theories, demonstrating how they are beacons that allow research to move forward.

Like an impregnable citadel, science tends to present itself through its successes. However, the situation turns out to be a bit more complex. Literally speaking, all theories are false. They will one day be replaced by better models which, very often, will make a clean sweep of past concepts. Anomalies interfere with the paradigm of standard models.  They compromise the edifice patiently constructed by scientists. Some are of passing, fleeting strangeness, others hold firm and trigger storms. From these anomalies emerge the premises of a new science which for the most past remains to be written.

From the cosmic origin of matter, the mysteries of black holes and the quantum vacuum state, Barrau raises scientific and philosophical questions on humanity’s current understanding of the cosmos and more generally everything that surrounds us. In this brilliant and elegantly written essay, Barrau dismantles the notion of model in and of itself to better share with us his love of all that still escapes us.

Aurélien Barrau is a French physicist and philosopher, specialized in Astroparticle physics, black holes, and cosmology.  He is a university professor, works at the CNRS‘s Laboratory for Subatomic Physics and Cosmology (LPSC), and acts as the director of the Grenoble Center for Theoretical Physics. He has written more than 100 refereed research articles and more than a dozen of books.  He co-edited with Jean-Luc Nancy What's These Worlds Coming To? published by Fordham University Press, 2014.