Laurent Nottale (born 29 July 1952) is an astrophysicist, a retired director of research at CNRS, and a researcher at the Paris Observatory. He is the author and inventor of the theory of scale relativity, which aims to unify quantum physics and

relativity theory The theory of relativity usually encompasses two interrelated theories by Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity, proposed and published in 1905 and 1915, respectively. Special relativity applies to all physical phenomena in ...

Scientific career

Nottale began his professional work in the domain of

general relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics ...

. He defended his PhD Thesis in June 1980, entitled "Perturbation of the Hubble relation by clusters of galaxies", in which he showed that clusters of galaxies as a whole may act as

gravitational lens A gravitational lens is a distribution of matter (such as a cluster of galaxies) between a distant light source and an observer that is capable of bending the light from the source as the light travels toward the observer. This effect is known ...

es on distant sources. Some of these results were reported in ''Nature''. He also published a popular book ''L'Univers et la Lumière'', Flammarion, Nouvelle Bibliothèque Scientifique 1994, Champs 1998) for which he received a prize in 1995 (Prix du livre d'Astronomie Haute-Maurienne-Vanoise). According to Vincent Bontems and there are two distinct phases in Nottale's scientific career. From 1975 to 1991 this included conventional topics, such as gravitational lenses, while from 1984 onwards he focused on developing his theory of scale relativity, a proposal for a theory of

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

based on fractal space-time.

Nottale and scale relativity theory

Scale relativity claims to extend the concept of relativity to physical

scales Scale or scales may refer to: Mathematics * Scale (descriptive set theory), an object defined on a set of points * Scale (ratio), the ratio of a linear dimension of a model to the corresponding dimension of the original * Scale factor, a number w ...

(of

time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...

, length,

energy In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of hea ...

, or momentum). Proponents have made wide-ranging claims on its behalf, including applications to the existence of

dark matter Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe. Dark matter is called "dark" because it does not appear to interact with the electromagnetic field, which means it does not a ...

and the formation of planetary systems, as well as to

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

geology Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ea ...

, and the

technological singularity The technological singularity—or simply the singularity—is a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable changes to human civilization. According to the m ...

. Nottale, himself, did not study technological singularities. The proposal has not attracted wide acceptance by the scientific community.

Selected publications

* ''Scale Relativity And Fractal Space-Time: A New Approach to Unifying Relativity and Quantum Mechanics''. 2011 1st ed. World Scientific Publishing Company. () * ''Fractal Space-Time and Micro-physics'', Editions World Scientific, May 1993 () (The reference book about Scale Relativity theory). * ''L'univers et la lumière, Cosmologie classique et mirages gravitationnels'', Éditions Flammarion, août 1993 () * ''La Relativité dans tous ses états : du mouvements aux changements d'échelle'', Éditions Hachette, 1998 () * ''Les arbres de l'évolution'', Laurent Nottale, Jean Chaline et Pierre Grou, Éditions Hachette, mars 2000 ()

References

External links

Laurent Nottale's personal page
* 265 articles on line (1975-2021)
Google Scholar
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nottale, Laurent 1952 births French cosmologists Philosophers of cosmology French relativity theorists Living people Research directors of the French National Centre for Scientific Research

Scientific career

Nottale and scale relativity theory

Selected publications

See also

References

External links