Understanding Avalanches
In recent years urbanisation has reached the mountains. This is due to the unplanned expansion of towns and villages, as well as the continuing attraction for winter sports. But the attraction that the mountains hold has often ignored the corresponding risks that avalances, land slides and rock falls can create for the residents. Rock falls caused by thawing, heavy rain, or even a light earthquake, even a passing skier, all of these can set millions of tons of matter into motion with a result that ravages everything in its path.
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Recent scientific research casts a new light on the materials that surround us. A large part of the elements that make up our landscapes and the ground beneath our feet are in fact made up of granular material. Following in the tracks of the winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize for Physics, Pierre Gilles de Gennes, a new generation of researchers have set out to explore this granular material. Today they form an active and well-known scientific community. Pierre Gilles de Gennes’ motivation in hilighting this aspect of his research is part of his more general objective of bringing science closer to the everyday concerns of the general public. And so, understanding avalanches, of many different sorts, has become a major occupation for these young researchers.
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