Felix Pharand-Deschênes
Felix Pharand-Deschênes | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Known for | Founder of Globaïa; planetary and cosmological data visualization |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Cosmography, Earth system visualization, Cosmology |
| Institutions | Globaïa |
Felix Pharand-Deschênes (Félix Pharand-Deschênes) is a Canadian cosmographer and the founder of Globaïa, a science-and-art organization that visualizes planetary systems and Earth-system science. He is listed in The Worldwide List of Dissident Scientists for a cosmological essay published through his organization.
Work
Pharand-Deschênes founded Globaïa in 2009 and describes himself as a cosmographer, working at the intersection of data, design, art and film to translate Earth-system science and cosmology into images and films. His visualizations of planetary change have been published and used by outlets and institutions including National Geographic, the United Nations, the World Economic Forum and the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and his work features in the documentary Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet.
Alongside this work he authored a cosmological essay circulated on the Globaïa website. In it he engages with the standard Big Bang model and discusses cosmic fate scenarios, including the idea that for a closed universe (density parameter Ω greater than 1) a future "Big Crunch" would act as a temporal inverse of the Big Bang. It is on the basis of this essay that Jean de Climont included him in the directory of dissident scientists. These speculative cosmological arguments lie outside the cosmological mainstream.