André Brahic, astrophysicist who danced Neptune – Le Figaro

discoverer of Neptune’s rings and outstanding popularizer, astrophysicist André Brahic died at 73 following a long illness.

It was a mesmerizing storyteller celestial dust. André Brahic, French astrophysicist known to the public for its touches of humor and his discovery of Neptune’s rings, died Sunday at age 73 after a long illness, according to information confirmed by the French Society of Astronomy and Astrophysics he chaired between 1990 and 1992. one whose ancestors were miners spent his life observing the sky. “He is a man of the night, it really begins to be himself at 11 o’clock,” related in 2014 the Jean Abitbol ENT surgeon in a program on France Culture at the astrophysicist.

in 1984, he discovered Neptune’s rings and arcs component fifth of them he named Liberty, Equality, Fraternity in honor of the bicentennial of the French revolution, Courage finally found by one of his students, Cécile Ferrari. Originally these findings, a numerical model that offers in 1974, and an investigative technique to simple tunes: when a planet passes in front of a star, it masks a moment its light; if the planet has a ring, the light from the star is interrupted just before and just after the passage of the planet. The story of this discovery is, according to André Brahic, an example of the research exposed the bureaucracy. In 1983, sixty teams are looking for several years to flush out the rings of Neptune, in vain, and want to close the debate in an article André Brahic refuses to co-sign the pretext that finding nothing does not mean that nothing ‘ is

Kepler default

But in 1984, surprise. astrophysicist discovers something that can not be a satellite (it is a bit transparent) or a ring ( signal appears on one side of Neptune, but not the other). Problem: since 1610, Kepler theorized that an arc of material could not exist, dust rotating around a celestial body could not fail to aggregate rapidly. “Well, if an arc of matter can exist,” he then tries to convince the scientific community. But a few months later, his American colleague William Hubbard calls in the middle of the night to tell him that he saw the same thing. The rings of Neptune, and their bows will be observed and photographed five years later by the Voyager probe.

A specialist in the physics of gas and the role of clouds in galaxy formation, he was part of the leading experts of solar system formation. It was the CEA astrophysicist and professor at the University Paris VII. It was since 1991 part of the imaging team for the Cassini spacecraft, launched toward Saturn in 1997. André Brahic was not the type to stop the sad human contingencies: his dream was to launch a new probe to Neptune , with arrival in 2057 to be its … 115 years. “If you interview me in 2059, I might be a little tired …”, he amused himself by mentioning his project.

Homo Rigolus

When leaving the stars, he had a motto: the struggle “against gays tristus in favor of gay Rigolus, fewer but more useful,” he said, arguing that the world gets better thanks to “a small dose of enthusiasm and ‘desire”. Enthusiasm, he possessed full and wanted to pass it on, do not hesitate to resort to humor. A stroke of books, lectures or interviews, he heard correct a defect of the world: “Science is absent from the civil society,” he lamented in an interview in 2012 to Le Figaro Magazine . If he was running for President of the Republic, he added, the program would take in three words: “research, culture and education. (…) I dream of a Department of the Future or Long Term where urgency does not would obscure the point. “In case of violence in the suburbs, he smiled,” send astronomers first, police after “.

with a rare talent popularizer, he did not hesitate to use of absurd images to explain the science, sometimes even despair some of his colleagues. And Saturn as seen from Earth, narrates Science and Future : “In summer, when photographing a person against the light in a bathing suit on the beach – romantic genre picture – you’ll see its silhouette and her hair shining, he told a conference. Saturn from Earth, it is the same! Except that instead of hair, it is the dust around the planet. “

Knight of the Legion of Honour in 2015, he received various scientific popularization price. The French Academy in contrast, to which he was a candidate in 2014, had escaped him in favor of Marc Lambron. Hopefully he has now joined the 3488 asteroid, called his name in 1990.