Thibaud-Damour, based at the Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies in Bures-sur-Yvette (IHES), has recently joined the Paris Academy of Sciences.
When I wrote this bibliographic note, I was impressed by the idea that Damour had distinguished himself by calculating the slowing down of the rotation of a double pulsar under the effect of energy loss due to gravitational waves, a phenomenon that earned Russell Hulse and John Taylor the Nobel Prize in 1993. However, on one hand, this topic was already well known for a long time, and on the other hand, the calculation of this slowdown came from calculations whose results were known as early as the 1960s, at a time when Damour was still in elementary school. Here are some elements of such a calculation, based on the notes from a course given by Damir Buskulic, a researcher at the Laboratory of Particle Physics in Annecy-le-Vieux.
http://lappweb.in2p3.fr/~buskulic/cours/Notes_cours_Buskulic_Jijel.pdf
The two neutron stars in the double system studied by Hulse and Taylor have similar masses, their average representing 1.35 solar masses. Their orbits are located in a volume of the order of that occupied by the Sun. Thus, the distance between the two stars is large compared to their Schwarzschild radius, which is less than 10 km. They rotate in 7.75 hours, which corresponds to an orbital velocity less than one thousandth of the speed of light. This allows for an analysis using Newtonian tools. The following calculation is taken from Buskulic's course:
Above, we see the typical shape of the plunging trajectory of two neutron stars on the verge of collapsing. This is the type of curve that was used to detect the signal in the background noise of gravitational wave detectors, where a "numerical relativity" approach was also used, which is relativistic and nonlinear. However, at the level of the measurement of the slowdown of the binary pulsar observed by Hulse and Taylor, this relativistic calculation was entirely unnecessary, as the associated corrections were infinitesimal.
Having been admitted to the Academy of Sciences and appointed as a full professor at the Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies in Bures-sur-Yvette, Samour has just received the CNRS Gold Medal for his theoretical work on gravitational waves:
Florid article. In videos, Damour says that the detection of gravitational waves, which earned three Americans the "prox" Nobel on October 3, 2017, "rests on work done in France" (i.e., his own). But he is the only one to say this. Abroad, this essential contribution is superbly ignored.
Apart from that, thirty years spent working on string theory.
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End of 2002:
With screenwriter-essayist Jean-Claude Carrière, he published at Odile Jacob a book titled "Essay on the Multiplicity of the World".
My comment on this book.
July 2005. Thibaud Damour and the branes (this is not a joke).
Far back in time, like whips,
Which, in the end, leave their mark,
Gigantic ropes crack
Then and only then does space come into being...
NOSTRADAMOUR