Jean-Pierre Petit

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 (Laboratory for Applications of MHD in Bitemperature Discharges to Aerodynamics).[4] 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.[5] This laboratory has published results since 2008 in the journal Acta Physica Polonica, and in associated presentations at international MHD conferences.

In topology, Petit worked with Bernard Morin on the torus and sphere eversion.[6][7][8] 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.[9] 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.

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 (tr. Knowledge Without Borders) that pays for their translation. The translated books are free to download from the organization's website and from the Université de Lyon website.[10]

Petit published a short book in French in 1997, in the form of a face-to-face discussion between two hypotheses (a universe containing positive mass dark matter VS a universe with negative mass shadow matter). In 1999, Petit wrote a sequel in English containing the information of the first book that was never published but available for free.[11] In 2008, Petit wrote two science comics popularizing the various concepts of the model in astrophysics, cosmology and topology.[12][13]

In the 1990s, he published several books about ufology and the Ummo case.[14][15][16]

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.[17][18] 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.[19] The Ummo affair is generally believed to have been an elaborate hoax.[20]