The puzzle of Space - Epsiloon

Epsiloon is a scientific outreach magazine created in 2021 that can be found in shops as well as online. In addition to a monthly edition on scientific news, an extra version appears every 3 months, that discusses one science word. The number 14 (april-june 2025) tackles the word "Space".

One of the articles, written by Clémentine Laurens, deals with research topics of the LAPTh: in particular space-time. The article presents the history of the concept of space, which became space-time, and various related questions on which current research is active: what is its size? How many dimensions? Is it continuous? What is there outside? And what if it were an illusion?

David Andriot, researcher at LAPTh, has been interviewed for the article of Epsiloon. He presents the evolution of the concept, from the absolute space and time of Newton, the space-time of Einstein general relativity, until our expanding universe, studied by the most recent cosmological observations. He briefly discusses few concepts associated to string theory, such as extra space dimensions that would be similar to tiny circles. Other researchers discuss related ideas, such as the landscape of possibilities in string theory, reminsicent of the popular concept of multiverse. As well as holography and the idea of an emergent space-time, or at least a non-fundamental one, which could be described by another, very different theory.