=============================================================================== FIRST MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT =============================================================================== HOW DOES THE GALAXY WORK? A Galactic Tertulia(*) in honor of the 60th Birthdays of Don Cox and Ron Reynolds June 23 - 27, 2003 in Granada, Spain ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.iaa.csic.es/~milkyway milkyway@iaa.es ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is a massive spiral. It possesses a large number of structural features that, while interesting in themselves, play significant roles in continuously reshaping the system and determining its evolution: a central black hole, an internal bar structure, magnetic fields, cosmic rays, a multi-phase interstellar medium and extended gaseous halo, giant star forming regions, stellar population gradients and aggregations, satellite galaxies, and a rotation curve indicative of a dominant dark matter component. Many of these aspects were discussed from a multidisciplinary point of view at the first international conference "The Formation of the Milky Way", which was held in Granada during September 1994. The conference proceedings, published by Cambridge University Press under the same name, summarize the understanding at that time of a number of key puzzles: star formation, chemical evolution, stellar populations, and disk instabilities. In the past decade, a flood of detailed observational data across the entire electromagnetic spectrum has modified our view of spiral galaxies and revealed many processes that are yet to be understood. Now, in view of accelerating advances with new observational facilities and theoretical tools, the time is ripe to reconvene this conference to critically assess recent developments with a gathering of leading world experts. Many of the original issues remain unanswered and new questions have recently emerged. This meeting will address how these are revising and extending our overall understanding of the Galaxy. Don and Ron have influenced many of these ideas in the last thirty years, now it is time to assemble a group of friends around them and discuss, in a friendly and open minded atmosphere, all these galactic processes and the way in which they shape our galactic system. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (*) A Tertulia is when a group of people gather to share their ideas, talents, and experiences in the spirit of interpreting life. It is a moment of song, poetry, and wit in conversation. In that spirit, this meeting will be an open discussion of how the Galaxy works, celebrating the things we have learned, debating the mysteries that are still unresolved, and looking forward to the progress ahead. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Scientific Organizing Committee: Emilio Alfaro (co-Chair), Rainer Beck, Bob Benjamin, Nancy Brickhouse, You-Hua Chu, Ralf-Jurgen Dettmar, John Dyson, Bruce Elmegreen, Katia Ferriere, Jose Franco (co-Chair), Ken Freeman, Isabelle Grenier, Carl Heiles,Gerhard Hensler, Marco Martos, Chris McKee, Casiana Mu~noz-Tu~non, John Raymond, Wilton Sanders, Steve Shore, Jose Maria Torrelles, Ellen Zweibel Local Organizing Committee: Emilio Alfaro, Antxon Alberdi, Antonio J. Delgado, Mariano Domenicone, Enrique Perez, Francisco Rendon, Rafael Rodrigo, Jose Ruedas, Jose M. Vilchez. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Potential Topics: Within the theme "How Does the Galaxy Work?", there are many topics to address, among them those that deal with: our current state of knowledge of the constituents, formation of the system as it impacts its current activity, rates of activities within it, our best models and ideas about why the constituents have their observed distributions in space, their thermal and dynamical properties, how the constituents interact (form or are generated, disperse or evolve), feedback between constituents, techniques for improving our observational knowledge and its interpretation. It is anticipated that contributors will frame their presentations within this thematic context, and that there will be considerable time for general discussion of the issues. A sample of the likely details includes: STARS AND DARK MATTER: Formation and evolution of the halo and disk, fossils and mergers, global structure including bars and arms, angular momentum transport, gravitational potential, star formation ISM: Thermal and non-thermal components (from cold to hot and from molecular to ionized), their local and global distributions, transition rates among them, filling factors and porosity, dust, gas motions, pressures, and the consequent scale heights of components ACTIVITIES AND INFLUENCES: Infall, galactic wind, supernovae and their remnants, OB associations and other forms of stellar feedback, superbubbles and fountains, bar and gaseous arm disturbances, diffuse heating mechanisms and their stochastic variation, sources and influences of cosmic rays, magnetic fields, turbulence, chemical evolution and gradients. OBSERVATIONAL TOOLS: Recent developments, results, new ideas, fundamental atomic physics, and plasma diagnostics. GLOBAL MODELING: Current status in dynamics, MHD, and collisionally and photoionized plasma modeling. Tentative results, promises, and puzzles.