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FIRST MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT
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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
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http://www.iaa.csic.es/~milkyway milkyway@iaa.es
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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.
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(*) 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.
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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.
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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.
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