Jean-Pierre Petit


Jean-Pierre Petit is a French scientist. He retired as a senior researcher at National Center for Scientific Research.
In the early 1980s, Petit authored the science comic book series The Adventures of Archibald Higgins.
He explored ufology, 9/11 conspiracy theories; hypersonic military weapons like Aurora, Ayaks, Avangard. He engaged with French domestic policy issues, especially the yellow vests movement, which he publicly supported.

Early life

Jean-Pierre Petit obtained his Engineer's degree in 1961 at French aeronautical engineering school ENSAE. In the 1960s, he worked in a French rocket engine test facility as a test engineer in the development of the first Submarine-launched Ballistic Missiles. In 1965 he was hired by the Marseille Institute of Fluid Mechanics. He worked as a research engineer conducting research in magnetohydrodynamics. Petit defended his doctoral thesis University of Provence in 1972.

Career

In 1974, he officially stopped experimental research in MHD and started working at the Marseille Observatory. He was co-director of the Calculation Center at the University of Provence from 1977 to 1983, where he developed CAD software in 1978. He retired from CNRS in April 2003. In 2007, he founded a non-profit organization called UFO-Science.
In 1983, he summarized his research about MHD propulsion and aerodynamic flow control in a scientific comic book titled The Silence Barrier.

Research

In 2007 Petit created UFO-Science, a non-profit organization devoted to scientific study of the UFO phenomenon.
He studied electromagnetic plasma propulsion and supersonic flight without shock wave through flow control by MHD force field in a new laboratory running with private funds, called LAMBDA λ. He created this concept of "Citizen Research" because he claims the Establishment represented by official scientific public administration, such as the CNRS and the CNES, failed to consider his ideas because of military strategic implications. This laboratory has published results since 2008 in the journal Acta Physica Polonica, and in associated presentations at international MHD conferences.

Art

In topology, Petit worked with Bernard Morin on the torus and sphere eversion. In the 1980s, he taught sculpture at the art school of Aix-en-Provence, where he designed a 5-foot diameter model of Boy's surface that was exhibited in the π room of the Palais de la Découverte for 25 years. He published its first parametric representation, where meridians are described with ellipses. François Apéry used this representation to build the implicit equation of Boy's surface.

Popular science

In 1979 Petit began writing "science comic books" published in French as Les Aventures d'Anselme Lanturlu and in English as The Adventures of Archibald Higgins, depicting a young character who explains hard scientific concepts with easy popular meaning and simple analogies. In 2005, Petit created a non-profit organization named Savoir Sans Frontières that pays for their translation. The translated books are free to download from the organization's website and from the Université de Lyon website.
Petit published a short book in French in 1997, in the form of a face-to-face discussion between two hypotheses. In 1999, Petit wrote a sequel in English containing the information of the first book that was never published but available for free. In 2008, Petit wrote two science comics popularizing the various concepts of the model in astrophysics, cosmology and topology.

Claims and public matter of controversies

Ummo case and ufology

In the 1990s, he published several books about ufology and the Ummo case.
He stated on various French TV shows that some of his main scientific ideas were directly inspired based upon his analysis of the Ummo documents, questioning their terrestrial origin. He testified in 2018 that he experienced personal contacts with unidentified entities that may or not be related to the Ummo case but that he believes are aliens. The Ummo affair is generally believed to have been an elaborate hoax.