An RAS Specialist Discussion Meeting
Testing gravity in the new decade: Radio pulsars, astrometry and gravitational waves is a one-day meeting organised under the aegis of the Royal Astronomical Society as part of the Specialist Discussion Meeting series. The link from the Society's web page is here.
Aims
The field of experimental gravitation has now entered an era that has been termed 'the quest for strong gravity'. Although General Relativity has passed every experimental test so far with flying colours, a number of instruments and observations are promising to put the theory under intense scrutiny over the next decade. Observations of radio pulsars with the Square-Kilometre-Array and its precursors, precision astrometry with GAIA and the expected direct detection of gravitational waves with ground based instruments (Advanced LIGO and Virgo) and the future Laser Interferometer Space Antenna are likely to produce a step-change in the field. It is therefore timely to review and discuss the future of observational gravitational physics in the light of these new instruments and the scientific opportunities that they will generate.
The aim of the meeting is to bring together a broad range of experts in optical, radio and gravitational-wave astronomy as well as theoretical physics to discuss expected results, synergies and complementarity in the common quest of understanding gravity.
Programme
Morning Session
- 10:00 - 10:30 Coffee
- 10:30 - 11:20 Clifford Will (WashU) Testing general relativity in new arenas
- 11:20 - 12:00 Norber Wex (MPIfR) Testing gravity with radio pulsars
- 12:00 - 12:40 Sergei Klioner (Technische U. Dresden) Testing gravity with GAIA
- 12:40 - 13:00 Clive Speake (U. Birmingham) Testing gravity in the Lab
Lunch
- 13:00 - 14:00 A light lunch will be available for purchase
Afternoon Session
- 14:00 - 14:40 Xavier Siemens (UWM) Testing gravity with Advanced LIGO
- 14:40 - 15:00 TBD Testing gravity at large scale
- 15:00 - 15:30 Discussion
- 15:30
Special Discussion Meeting ends - 15:30 - 16:00 Coffee
RAS Monthly A&G (Ordinary) Meeting
- 16:00 - 18:00 Participants (whether Fellows of the RAS or not) are encouraged to attend the free Monthly A&G (Ordinary) Meetings, at which topics are presented at a level suitable for a more general audience. Society administrative business is always kept to a minimum, and rarely occupies more than a few minutes at the start of the meeting.
Location
The meeting will be held at
- The Geological Society
- Burlington House
- Piccadilly
- London
- W1J 0BG
Making a poster contribution
The meeting provides an excellent opportunity for young researches to (briefly) show case their work and share their ideas with the experts in the field.
We encourage in particular PhD students and young post-docs who are working on relevant topics to present a poster. The meeting participants will be able to view the posters during the lunch break. If you wish to submit a poster, please send an email with title, authors and abstract to Alberto Vecchio (av[at]star.sr.bham.ac.uk).
The deadline for abstract submission is 18th November 2010 ; this is a hard deadline, and due to organizational reasons we won't be able to accept abstracts after this date.
Scientific Organisers
- Gerry Gilmore (IoP, Cambridge) gil[at]ast.cam.ac.uk
- Michael Kramer (MPI fuer Radioastronomie) mkramer[at]mpifr-bonn.mpg.de
- Alberto Vecchio (U. Birmingham) av[at]star.sr.bham.ac.uk
- Graham Woan (U Glasgow) graham.woan[at]glasgow.ac.uk