Welcome

On behalf of the Local Organising Committee, it is our great pleasure to invite you to the 18th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation (GRG18) and 7th Edoardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves (Amaldi7) to be held in Sydney, Australia from 8-14 July 2007.

This is the first occasion on which these two premier international conferences will be held simultaneously in the same location and represents a unique opportunity to bring together the world’s leading scientists in the fields of General Relativity and Gravitation, and Gravitational Wave Detection and Astronomy.

GRG18 is held under the auspices of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation and its scientific programme is overseen by the Scientific Organising Committee, which is chaired by Professor Sathyaprakash.

Amaldi7 is held under the auspices of the Gravitational Wave International Committee (GWIC) which oversees the scientific programme for the meeting and is chaired by Professor Cerdonio.

The morning plenary sessions of the two conferences will be combined, covering all aspects of General Relativity and Gravitation including Classical General Relativity; Relativistic Astrophysics and Cosmology; Experimental Work on Gravity and Quantum Issues in Gravitation, and all aspects of Gravitational Wave Detection and Astronomy. In the afternoons there will be a dedicated parallel session for Amaldi7 and five parallel sessions for GRG18. After GRG18 concludes on the evening of Friday 13 July, Amaldi7 will continue to run sessions on Saturday 14 July, concluding at the end of the afternoon.

GRG18 will be the first International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation to be held in Australia, indeed the first in the Australasian region, and we are very excited to have this opportunity to showcase the research of the international General Relativity and Gravitational Wave communities to Australian scientists, government and the general public. We held a number of successful gravitation-related events throughout Australia in 2005 in connection with the World Year of Physics, and the holding of GRG18 and Amaldi7 here in 2007 will surely build on the groundswell of interest and activity in these fields which was generated at that time.

The Conference Social Program has been designed to allow delegates time away from the formalities of the conference sessions to network and exchange ideas with colleagues and friends from around the world. 

Sydney is situated on one of the most beautiful and famous harbours in the world   Renowned for its iconic landmarks, the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge, delegates and their families will have the opportunity to experience a unique social and tour program showcasing the highlights of Sydney.

We look forward to welcoming you and your families to Sydney in 2007.

Susan M. Scott Chair Local Organising Committee  GRG18 and Amaldi7 President  Australasian Society for General Relativity and Gravitation (ASGRG)

David E. McClelland Deputy Chair Local Organising Committee  GRG18 and Amaldi7 Chair  Australian Consortium for Interferometric Gravitational-wave Astronomy (ACIGA)

Expression of interest

INSPIRALLING BLACK HOLES
Credit: Seidel (AEI) / Benger (ZIB)

Main banner captions:

image 1: 'Distribution of detached white-dwarf–white-dwarf binaries in our galaxy as a function of the gravitational wave frequency and chirp mass.' from Simulation of the white dwarf–white dwarf galactic background in the LISA data Jeffrey A Edlund, Massimo Tinto, Andrzej Królak, and Gijs Nelemans 2005 Class. Quantum Grav. 22 S913-S926

image 2: 'A three-dimensional visualization of the mesh including the excised region and the refinement around the particle.', from A toy model for testing finite element methods to simulate extreme-mass-ratio binary systems Carlos F Sopuerta, Pengtao Sun Pablo Laguna and Jinchao Xu 2006 Class. Quantum Grav. 23 251-285

image 3: 'Scalar gravitational field > at time t = 140M (n = 30 000).', from A toy model for testing finite element methods to simulate extreme-mass-ratio binary systems Carlos F Sopuerta, Pengtao Sun Pablo Laguna and Jinchao Xu 2006 Class. Quantum Grav. 23 251-285