[Interview] Europe’s labs are chronically underfunded and sovereignty is at stake, says French Academy chief Françoise Combes

First published in Respekt. A conversation with Françoise Combes, head of the French Academy of Sciences, covering Flat Earth theory, Elon Musk’s mega-constellations, and why humanity needs space exploration. We have photographed the black hole at the centre of our galaxy, we are getting closer to practical quantum computers, we have discovered gravitational waves, and we are exploring Mars and the outer Solar System. Yet scientists still have to explain that the Earth is not flat. How do you make sense of that? I don’t really understand why some people think the Earth is flat. We have images from space, from the Moon, and from the International Space Station. I don’t think most of them genuinely believe it. Perhaps they want to belong to a community or simply enjoy being contrary. To me, it is more a reaction against science than against the evidence itself. They feel that scientists are telling them what to believe, and they reject that authority. But science is not about authority – it is about facts. Science can sometimes sound like science fiction, though. I’m thinking of quantum mechanics, superposition, or even dark matter and dark energy. Is there a way to explain these ideas to a general audience? When I give a talk to the general public, I try to explain why we think there is dark matter or dark energy, but also that we are not sure they really exist. In fact, it is because we are missing something. We are ignorant of something, and that’s what I try to explain. Because of the dynamics of galaxies, we know there must be something else. We see the forces that affect the rotation of galaxies, together with the centrifugal effects and so on. We know that the visible matter is not enough. So either there is some missing matter that we still have to find – maybe new particles that we will discover one day. Maybe the law of gravity is not completely correct, and we need to extend Newton’s and Einstein’s laws to a new fundamental law of nature that we have not yet discovered. What I try to explain is that we have these two possibilities. Either we find new particles – the missing matter – or we have to change the law of gravity. So we are simply facing a scientific problem that we will solve in the future. We are exploring the different possibilities. There is a mystery, but it is a mystery that can be solved. It is not a ghost or anything like that. If we cannot see dark matter directly, how can we study it? We can detect it indirectly. We cannot detect it through radiation, because everything we observe in the Universe is detected through some kind of radiation or by particles being emitted - cosmic rays, gravitational waves, as you mentioned, or other messengers. We call this multi-messenger astronomy: neutrinos, cosmic rays, gravitational waves, electromagnetic waves. We cannot detect dark matter through any of these messengers. But what we can detect is its gravity. We can observe it through gravitational lensing. When you have a galaxy in the background, and there is some mass along the line of sight between that galaxy and the observer, the mass acts like an optical lens, like a piece of glass. It bends the light - the electromagnetic waves - and so it distorts the image of the background galaxy. When you observe millions of galaxies, you can measure these distortions and make a map of the missing matter in front of them. In fact, we have already made maps of dark matter. So even though we cannot see it directly, we can detect it through its gravitational effects, and we can actually map its distribution. Are people interested in this kind of research? I cannot really say, because I am biased. I am always speaking to people who are already interested, so there is a selection bias. If I stopped people in the street and asked them, maybe they wouldn't be interested at all. The people I meet ask a lot of questions. They are very enthusiastic and fascinated, but maybe they are not representative of the general public. Maybe most people simply don't care, because these questions don't have an impact on their everyday lives. What affects them is global warming, of course, or whether they have enough money left at the end of the month. Those are the practical things that really impact their lives. This also raises the broader question of whether it is really the role of scientists to explain how reality works. It is a bit like expecting a physician to explain to every patient exactly how a medicine interacts with their body at the molecular level. Of course, that's true. We are paid to do science, to make discoveries, and to find answers to the questions people have. But, of course, part of our work is also to communicate science, to share our discoveries and the results we have found. During the last century, we have learned so much about the Universe that we simply didn't know before. So one of our goals is to make the public aware of these discoveries and, hopefully, interested in them. I think people should care more - because science is one of the two greatest drivers of technological progress throughout history - the other one is war. Yes, modern warfare requires new technologies, such as drones and advanced electronics, so industry has to develop them. But as you said: space exploration has also been a great source of innovation for a long time. We have SpaceX, satellite communications, the internet, and the exploration of the Solar System. We hear Elon Musk saying that we are going to Mars, and so on. Personally, I don't believe that living on Mars will be possible, because Mars is not habitable at all. It would be extremely difficult. But at least this ambition and curiosity to go there have led to a great deal of progress. We have sent robots to Mars, and we are now going to Jupiter and its moons to investigate whether there are oceans beneath the ice, and whether there could even be microbial life in those oceans. We are going to explore all of this. Some people argue that humanity should stop spending money on the Moon or Mars while our own planet is facing climate change. Is that a fair argument? I understand this argument. But if we are talking about research, the money spent on missions to Jupiter and similar projects is actually very small. Most of the space budget is not for scientific research at all. The billions that are spent in space are mainly for satellites that observe the Earth - for agriculture, climate monitoring, global warming, and so on - or for telecommunications and providing internet access around the world. There are now thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit, and they are there for practical purposes, not for research.