Encuentros Relativistas Españoles - Spanish Relativity Meeting

This international conference is organized by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and will be held from 10-14 September, 2007 at the Puerto de La Cruz Conference Centre (Tenerife, Spain). See a static map of Tenerife in Google Maps.

NEW! Results of the ERE 2007 Meeting Survey.

Scientific Rationale

Since 1977, the Encuentros Relativistas EspañolesSpanish Relativity Meeting (ERE) - have provided a discussion forum for leading specialists in Relativity and Gravitation. The objective is to promote contacts between the Spanish Relativity community and international experts to discuss the latest developments in the field. The ERE are by far Spain's leading annual event in this field and enjoy international recognition.

The 2007 meeting (XXX ERE) intends to take advantage of the high degree of interconnection between theoretical and experimental physics to serve as a meeting point for both communities. Research in these fields related to Relativity and  Gravitation is now in what will probably be seen as their golden age.

The main reason for this rebirth is the technical progress, which is now reaching a suitable level for measuring subtle effects predicted by General Relativity some time ago, such as gravitational waves. Experiments of a precision inconceivable not so long ago (COBE, WMAP, LIGO, etc.) are enabling Cosmology to advance firmly reveal a hitherto unsuspected picture of the contents of the Universe, which seems to be mostly composed of an entity (dark energy) whose nature is as yet unknown.

The spectacular increase in the power of computers makes it possible to create realistic simulations that must be taken into account in designing experiments and analysing observations: numerical Relativity. At the same time, the need to reach better accuracies in the measurements is causing some faint gravitational effect that was previously rejected to be taken into account, as in the European Galileo project. Finally, the new generation of telescopes, of which the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) is the most outstanding example, allows us to reach frontiers in the quality of observations that were not long ago considered as utopian.

Everything clearly points towards a most active field of research, with more experimental results that are of interest from the theoretical point of view, and that potentially have further  technological applications.

Main Topic to be Discussed

The topic of the meeting will be challenges facing the theoretical and experimental communities in the XXI century. The following aspects of the theories of Relativity and Gravitation will be among the topics to be discussed:

The meeting will stress the important links between Cosmology and Relativity and Gravitation.

Sponsors

The Symposium is organized by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) with the support of the Spanish Society on Relativity and Gravitation (SEGRE), the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (MEC), the Cabildo de Tenerife, BBVA, the Ayuntamiento de la Orotava , the Ayuntamiento del Puerto de la Cruz and DISA.

Logo IAC Logo SEGRE
MEC