The SciSchmooze
Lili Galilean
9 March 2025
Greeting science fans!
The international table tennis circuit is currently witnessing a “French Renaissance” at the table. Brothers Félix and Alexis Lebrun—the world’s most exciting duo—have disrupted the global rankings, becoming the first Europeans in years to truly challenge the long-standing dominance of the Chinese national team (Felix Lebrun vs Lin Shidong: spin highlights).
At 19 and 22, the Lebrun brothers are proving that elite technique is as much about the “hardware” as the hand. Félix has revitalized the penhold grip—a style once deemed too delicate for the modern power game—using its inherent wrist flexibility to execute aggressive, close-to-the-table “flicks.” This high-speed tactic is enhanced thanks to novel materials used in modern ping pong paddles. It’s a masterclass in Surface Science meeting tactical evolution.The Microscopic Spin: Why the Lebrun “Flick” is a Materials Marvel
When Félix executes a signature “flick,” he leverages a high-speed interaction between three engineered layers in the paddle:
- The Blade (Arylate-Carbon): This composite layers stiff carbon for speed with woven Arylate—a liquid crystal polymer (like Kevlar)—to dampen vibrations. This synergy increases “dwell time” on the paddle, providing the critical milliseconds needed to “feel” and redirect energy.
- The Sponge (The Spring): An open-cell polymer foam that acts as a reservoir. Upon impact, the microscopic pores compress to store potential energy, then recoil as a tensor to catapult the ball forward.
- The Top-sheet (The “Tack”): Uses Van der Waals tackifiers to literally “bond” the surface to the ball for a microsecond. This maximizes the conversion of tangential speed into rotation, triggering the Magnus Effect, which forces the ball into a sharp, curving dive.
Félicette: The Astrocat Who Earned Her Stripes
While we celebrate French excellence in sport, we have to look back at Félicette, the first and only cat to survive a trip to space (and likely the patron saint of Herb’s “Cats in Space” t-shirts). In 1963, while the US and USSR focused on primates and canines, France’s center for aviation medicine (CERMA) looked past them toward the common house cat (Félicette’s Memorial via Smithsonian Magazine).
Félicette, a tuxedo cat from the streets of Paris, was launched 157 km high aboard a Véronique AGI rocket. She returned a hero, and her flight provided the first deep look at mammalian brain activity in microgravity. Today, her legacy lives on in Strasbourg, France, where a bronze memorial statue stands at the International Space University to honor her 1963 mission.
The Transatlantic Lab: French-American Synergy
The “French-American handshake” has transformed a historic space race into a modern scientific partnership, visible across nearly every major space and digital mission:
- Hardware in the Stars: The SuperCam on the Mars Perseverance rover was a joint effort between the French space agency (CNES) and Los Alamos National Lab. Similarly, the James Webb Space Telescope represents a historic collaboration: an American-built marvel launched on a French-designed Ariane 5 rocket (The JWST & Ariane 5).
- The “Mistral-to-Materials” Pipeline: Researchers at LBNL are utilizing French-engineered models like Mistral to power frameworks like MatterChat (MatterChat: Mistral in Materials Science). These tools sift through millions of research papers to extract and predict stable crystal structures, acting as “Digital Scouts” for the next generation of solid-state batteries.
- The GitHub of AI: Hugging Face, founded by French entrepreneurs, has become the central hub for NASA’s Earth Observation Foundation Models (NASA & Hugging Face Partnership). It is a platform born of French open-source philosophy powering the most critical data-crunching missions of the American space agency.
In a world of noise and conflict, international collaborations in science, space, and sports are a breath of fresh air—reminding us that when we team up, we can reach for something much bigger than ourselves: like cats in space returning safely back to Earth.
See you at the table (or the Exploratorium!),
Lili
Lili’s Top 3 Bay Area Science Events (March 8 – 15)
- After Dark: Crafty and Calculating at the Exploratorium (Thursday, March 12, San Francisco)
- This event explores the intersection of coding, fiber arts, and math. For Women’s History Month, they are profiling women in mathematics—a great chance to see “physics in action” outside the lab.
- Pi Day Celebration at the Exploratorium (Saturday, March 14, San Francisco)
- The 38th annual celebration includes a “Pi” procession, math-themed activities, and plenty of pie. It is the ultimate “physics of play” event.
- Marine Science Sunday: Amazing Migrations (Sunday, March 8, Sausalito)
- The Marine Mammal Center is hosting a deep dive into the epic journeys of gray whales and elephant seals, shifting focus from the nanoscale to the macro-scale.
Upcoming Events:
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