Interview
Article reserved for subscribers
For more than forty years, the famous Vietnamese-American researcher has been trying to explain how the conditions for the creation of the universe were conducive to the appearance of life. To do this, he observes “compact blue dwarf galaxies”, similar to those which appeared just after the big bang.
“Impermanence” and “interdependence”. These two principles of the Buddhist religion, the professor of astronomy at the University of Virginia (United States) finds them in the laws of the universe where everything changes and where everything is connected. Trinh Xuan Thuan has made the dissemination of his knowledge a principle of life: at 76 years old, he has authored more than twenty books on space intended for non-scientists and continues his research between Charlottesville and the Paris Observatory .
He receives Liberation to share his lifelong obsession: the birth of the first galaxies. A search which led him to admire the “great consistency” of the universe as well as its mysteries since 95% of its composition, the famous “dark energy” and “dark matter”, is unknown to us. “We think we know a lot of things, but the universe constantly puts us in our place”s’amuse a répeter Trinh Xuan Thuan.
Why have you devoted a large part of your research to studying the birth of the first galaxies?
Because they hold the mystery of origins. They are the ones who put an end to dark ages (the “dark ages”), producing the first sources of light in the universe. They are thought to have formed a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, the primordial explosion that occurred 13.8 billion years ago. It’s a conundrum that has preoccupied me since my early days at the University of Virginia (Charlottesville, Eta.
