When Science et Vie and JPP were living perfect love
When Science et Vie, flying saucers and Jean-Pierre Petit were getting along well
It was in 1974. I don't remember when it had started. I think in 1972. I wrote a lot of articles, about the delta plane, about how flies fly. Here are some pdfs, sent by a reader, Elno, which correspond to articles published in Science et Vie in 1974.
The August 1974 article The article
of October 1974
At that time I signed as Mylos. It was the name of the magnificent 9-meter sailboat of my friend Louis de Fouquières, all wooden, with teak floor. Who is sailing on it now? I don't know. But I had some great moments on this marvel. Louis, now ... sails among the stars. One day I'll tell you how we met. Forty years of friendship, non-stop with this extraordinary man in every way.
Even back then I was like a fish in water at the editorial office. Then there was the article "a plasma engine for UFOs". The success was important and the magazine was forced to recall the issue to satisfy the demand of readers. This was the reason why Philippe Cousin, its editor-in-chief, decided to offer me a trip to the United States in 1976, on the occasion of the bicentenary of the American Revolution. I wrote a report on this trip in a book, Les Enfants du Diable, which could only be published ... twenty years later, by Albin Michel. At the end of 1976 I suddenly fell completely out of favor with the magazine. Looking back, I have often tried to understand what caused such a rejection. People with whom I had had very friendly relations, one after another, suddenly turned cold towards me.
I think we have to look into psycho-social-immunological mechanisms. My MHD work, my 1975 publication in the Comptes Rendus of the Paris Academy of Sciences, the way I had defeated in a public duel and in a singular fight the terrible Grand Inquisitor of the Rationalist Union, the academician Evry Schatzman, created an "inflammatory state" with a backlash effect.
My interest in the UFO file cost me dearly on a professional level. For 28 years I had to withstand the impact of constant attacks. Only the quality of my scientific work saved me each time, as in 1987 when James Lequeux, then director of the observatory in Marseille where I was stationed, had negotiated my expulsion by letter of cachet with the CNRS General Directorate. I was readmitted three months later, thanks to two articles on cosmology published in the excellent journal Modern Physics Letters A.
No more flippant remarks
All at the tip of the sword
It is not comfortable to refuse the collar, to refuse to kneel, to recant. One can lose one's life, as was the case for Jacques Benveniste and Michel Bounias. As Rémy Chauvin used to say:
- In our university-research circles, nothing should be exaggerated. It never goes further than assassination ...
Beyond the loss of research funding and mission expenses, all doors closed one after another. Here is a last article that I was able to publish in 1980 in the magazine Pour la Science, which also closed its doors to me afterwards, regardless of the subject. I had, however, co-signed in 1979 an article on mathematics that was to make history in the history of the sphere inversion.
The article in Pour la Science,
on MHD
This article is amusing because it is illustrated by a photo that had been taken in 1975 in the kitchen sink of Maurice Viton, in Aubagne. It shows the cylindrical MHD accelerator in action, sucking in ink from a pen, which called for the following comment:
In France we don't have oil, but we have sinks
You will see one day, when Viton and I have been dead and buried for a long time, that UFOs, in part due to their intra-atmospheric behavior, make use of MHD. Then I would like people to remember us and to put a plaque at Maurice's place, bearing:
Here, in this modest kitchen, Maurice Viton and Jean-Pierre Petit opened the way to the stars for humanity
All of this foreshadowed "the submarine without a propeller" from the album Le Mur du Silence (1983). I feel like, as I write, telling you an anecdote. Philippe Boulanger was at that time the editor-in-chief of Pour la Science. I think he still is. We occasionally had informal conversations. One day we had the following dialogue:
*- Do you know why the UFO subject doesn't interest you?
- No.
- I'll tell you. In the past I was a fairly good chess player. I played in a club. I was ranked, I participated in tournaments. One day a Polish master was invited by the club. He came to give us lessons.
- The Slavs, in chess, are terrible.
- So he gave us lessons by moving pieces on a metal board that were held with magnets. He showed us positions, evoked strategies. But he didn't seem to want to face one of us. Every time someone from the club proposed to move pieces on a chessboard, he avoided it. But one day I caught him in the café near the club. I grabbed a chessboard, a clock, and proposed a "blitz" game.
- A blitz game?
- Yes, these are games where each player has a limited, short time to think, controlled by a clock.
- A clock?
- It's not a real clock. There are two dials that count down the thinking time for each player. Each time it's the other's turn to play, you activate your thinking time by pressing one of the buttons. When he has played, you do the same. It's each one's turn.
- So you put the chessboard and the clock under his nose.
- Yes. He couldn't refuse anymore. He sighed and said to me in a tired tone "as you wish..."
- And then?
- We started the first game. He didn't even look at the chessboard. He was reading his newspaper and sipping his coffee while I was tearing my hair out. When it was his turn to play, he took a quick look, moved a piece quickly, then went back to reading.
- And then?
- In ten moves I was completely defeated. I proposed a rematch. Same thing...*
Boulanger remained thoughtful for a few seconds.
- After that, I gave up chess.
Closed doors: you will vainly look for any criticism of the series of Anselme Lanturlu adventures in popular science magazines like La Recherche, Science et Vie, Ca m'Intéresse. Just an advertisement in Pour la Science, to announce the release of each album. Normal: the magazine actually belonged to Belin editions. Without that, the series would never have reached 15 albums. But what's funny is that now Lanturlu and his gang have taken to the digital jungle. We are about to conquer an international market (including these poor Chinese, who will be defenseless against it) thanks to a totally revolutionary product: the free product.
France provides its weapons. [The
new law](/legacy/OVNIS/../BIG%2...