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The 27th Midwest Relativity Meeting will bring together researchers from across the Midwest and beyond to discuss General Relativity and a broad range of topics in gravitational physics, including classical and quantum gravity, numerical relativity, relativistic astrophysics, cosmology, gravitational waves, mathematical general relativity, string theory, and experimental gravity.

The Meeting will start at noon on Thursday, October 12th with talks and continue through the day of Saturday October 14. Each morning starts with a longer plenary talk.

All participants are welcome to register to give a talk (see Registration). We encourage submissions of observational and theoretical talks. In particular, we strongly encourage graduate students and postdocs to present talks on their research. The Blue Apple Prize will be awarded for the best talk by a student.

Participants must book their own accommodation - we have hotel blocks, and, reservations must be made by September 13 for the Ann Arbor Regent Hotel and Suites, and, September 27 for the Executive Learning and Conference Center Center, see Hotel pages.

Plenary speakers:

Abhay Ashtekar (Penn State) and Matthew Evans (MIT).

Surprises in the Theory of Gravitational Waves

Abhay Ashtekar

Institute for Gravitation & the Cosmos and Physics Department

The Pennsylvania State University

During the first fifty years of general relativity, there was considerable confusion on the issue of physical reality of gravitational waves. This was resolved in the 1960's through detailed analysis by Bondi, Sachs, Newman, Penrose and others. But surprisingly, wide spread confusion still persists on basic issues such as the notion of Transverse-Traceless modes even in the linear approximation. On another front it was realized only recently that, in presence of sources, there is a subtle interplay between the `Coulombic' and `radiative' aspects of the gravitational field that has practical consequences. Finally, much of our ~ 50 year theory of gravitational waves does not go through in presence of a positive cosmological constant, Lambda, no matter how small it is! On the other hand, observations have revealed that the universe is accelerating in a manner consistent with the presence of a positive Lambda. Therefore, at a conceptual level, we need to rebuild the foundations of our theory of gravitational waves. This talk will summarize these surprising (and vexing) issues and discuss the current status of their resolution.

Gravitational Waves: Discoveries and Future Detectors

Matthew Evans, MIT

Two years ago the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) made the first direct detection of gravitational waves; minute distortions in space-time caused by cataclysmic events far away in the universe. Very recently, the merger of a binary black hole system was detected by both of the Advanced LIGO detectors and the Advanced Virgo detector in Italy, demonstrating the vastly improved localization capability of a 3 detector GW network. I will talk about the sources of the signals we detected, the physics behind the detectors, and prospects for the future of this emerging field.

The conference is supported jointly by the Michigan Center for Applied and Interdisciplinary Mathematics (MCAIM) and the Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics (MCTP).

Galaxy Cluster Abell 370 and Beyond

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Jennifer Lotz and the HFF Team (STScI)