[vsnet-alert 9113] 1st announcement: "A Century of Cosmology"
Cosmology-2007
cosmology2007 at brera.inaf.it
Wed Nov 8 22:19:19 JST 2006
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CONGRESS FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT
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A CENTURY OF COSMOLOGY
Past, present and future
August 27-31, 2007
Venice, Italy
Webpage: http://cosmology2007.brera.inaf.it/
email: cosmology2007 at brera.inaf.it
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Dear colleagues,
This is the first announcement of the conference:
"A century of cosmology - Past, present and future"
The conference will be held on 2007 August 27-31, in
S. Servolo, a small island in the Venice lagoon.
Please notify this event to all your colleagues, and kindly
upload this conference information on any of the relevant
Web(s) and/or Board(s).
The outline of the Conference is given below and at the
Conference website: http://cosmology2007.brera.inaf.it/
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CONFERENCE RATIONALE
--------------------
The meeting aims at witnessing the current knowledge in
cosmology discussing some of the milestones of the last
decades and at focusing on the fundamental questions still
unsolved.
The role that the next generation instruments will play in this
field will be addressed briefly touching in this way upon past,
present and future, as witnessed by some of the protagonists.
Indeed,the meeting would like to gather some of the scientists
that leaded the field few decades ago with part of those who are
leading now to set the guidelines for youngest scientists that
will lead the future.
SCIENTIFIC RATIONALE
--------------------
No more than 30 years ago, only the local Universe was accessible
and the fundamental cosmological parameters were poorly
constrained. The early redshift surveys were showing the first
details of the large structures of galaxies. When in the 70s the
first "maps" of the local Universe were produced, it was quite
surprising to see that the distribution of galaxies in space was
anything but random, with galaxies actually appearing to be
distributed on surfaces, almost bubble like, surrounding large
empty regions, or ``voids".
Thanks to the recent developments in instrumentation and detectors,
astrophysics and cosmology are now witnessing a golden age of
knowledge and discoveries.
The advent of the 10 meter class telescopes, of the near-infrared
detectors, of the wide field cameras, of the Hubble Space Telescope
and of the space-based observatories for the X-ray and the microwave
background radiation has produced in the 90s an impressive growth of
knowledge in observational cosmology.
We are now on the verge of delineating, if not completing, the mosaic
that starts from the epoch when the Universe exited from the Dark Age
to form stars, ionize gas, and seed metals and dust.
We may be able to finally understand how the present Universe came about.
Galaxies are being observed up to z~7 probing the Universe
when it was experienced only 5% of its life.
Structures extending over hundreds of Mpc are emerging from the
present days wide and deep surveys carried out with the largest
ground-based telescopes reaching fluxes even 10^(4-5) times fainter
then those reached in the 70s.
The current observations of the diffuse microwave background
radiation are constraining the fundamental parameters of the modern
cosmology (H0 and Omega) to better then a few percent.
The existence of the dark energy seems to be strongly required.
Many fundamental issues, nevertheless, are still poorly understud, e.g.
- Our knowledge of the content of the Universe is limited to a small
percentage of baryonic matter while most of it consists of Dark
Energy (about 70%) and Dark Matter (about 28%) of unknown nature.
Characterizing the nature of the dark energy is a profound challenge
for observational cosmology and particle physics.
What is physics telling us about the dark energy and the acceleration
of the Universe?
Do distant supernovae and the Cosmic Microwave Background tell
the whole story or do we need alternative theories?
- Gravity is thought to be the main driver shaping the structures both
on galactic and larger scale and the dark matter seems to dominate
this process.
While the general build-up of the cosmic structure seems to naturally
take shape in this framework the assembly of the barionic mass seems
to display a different behaviour. Is it only due to dissipative
processes ?
Do dark matter and barions follow the same assembly history ?
- Both the observations of the CMB and the observations of the most
distant QSOs and galaxies suggest that the universe re-ionized at
very early epochs placing the formation of the first objects at z>10.
What is the source of the re-ionization and how could we detect
sources at z >7 ?
OUTLINE OF THE MEETING
----------------------
The meeting will be organized in 5 days, from monday 27 to friday
31 August.
Half of the day on Wednesday 29 will possibly be dedicated to a
real time working session and group brainstorming while the
remaining half will be free from meeting appointments.
Each day will be focused on a topic of cosmological interest and will
begin with two review talks, the first one giving the historical
perspective and the second one taking stock of the current knowledge.
Then, a large number of contributing talks focused on recent and
ongoing researches will follow.
Each working day will end by a perspective view of
the relevant topic as seen by the next generation instruments.
SCIENTIFIC ORGANIZING COMMITTE
-------------------------------
Marco Bersanelli (Milan-IT), Catherine Cesarsky (ESO),
Daniela Calzetti (Baltimore-USA), Guido Chincarini (Milan-IT),
George V. Coyne (Vatican), Martha P. Haynes (Ithaca-USA),
Alberto Fernandez Soto (Valencia-SP), Olivier Le Fevre (Marseille-FR),
Vladimir N. Lukash (Moscow-RF), Piero Madau (Santa Cruz-USA),
P. James E. Peebles (Princeton-USA), Max Pettini (Cambridge-UK),
Paolo Saracco (Milan-IT), R. Sunyaev (Garching-D),
Massimo Tarenghi (ESO)
LOCAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
--------------------------
C. Bernasconi, M. Bolzonella, S. Covino,
R. Della Ceca, R. Millul, P. Saracco
REGISTRATION
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If you wish to register to receive further mailings about this
conference, please send a blank email to
registration-request at brera.inaf.it or go to
http://cosmology2007.brera.inaf.it/ and click on 'Pre-registration'.
LOCATION
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The conference will be held in the S. Servolo conference center
on the S. Servolo island 5 minutes (by ferry) away from the
historical center of Venice. Given the capacity of the Auditorium
a limited number of ~220 partecipants can be accepted.
We hope you can attend the "A century of cosmology" conference.
If you are coming, we strongly advise you to take a couple of extra
days to explore Venice, a unique place in the world. On the conference
webpages you will find more information on S. Servolo and on Venice.
PROGRAM
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In addition to invited talks, contributed papers (oral and poster) can
be presented. The SOC will select a limited number of contributions
for oral presentation on the basis of the submitted abstracts.
On the other hand, large space and visibility will be given to poster
presentations to allow a detailed descriptions of the results.
PROCEEDINGS
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The contributions will be published as proceedings.
Details will be given soon.
CONTACT INFORMATION
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For inquiries concerning travel, accommodation, and other logistic
details, please consult the conference webpage
webpage: http://cosmology2007.brera.inaf.it
email: cosmology2007 at brera.inaf.it
Fax: +39 0272001600
Please feel free to disseminate this information among your
colleagues.
We are looking forward to meeting you in S. Servolo.
On behalf of the SOC and LOC,
Guido Chincarini and Paolo Saracco
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