Back to Mississippi

First time I went to Oxford Mississippi was 7 years ago, as a visiting master student at The University of Mississippi or, as it is more commonly known, OleMiss. I arrived there around May and, as in most college towns like Oxford, the city emptied right after the term finished, few days after my arrival. This is to say, nothing much was going on in Oxford at that time; nonetheless during my six-month visit there I managed to meet very interesting people, live curious experiences, have fun, and specially work hard in what has later become my field of research. Looking back, I had really a great time.

This is why i'm so excited to come back in Oxford MS tomorrow to attend the Workshop "Testing General Relativity with Astrophysical Observations".

The beautiful logo of the workshop recalls the iconographic Southern magnolia with the trajectory of an extreme mass-ratio inspiral, i.e. the evolution of a stellar-mass compact object orbiting a supermassive black hole like the one at the center of the Milky Way. [credits: Ana Sousa]

This workshop will bring together experts in tests of general relativity, modified theories of gravity and astrophysics. The aim is to foster informal discussions on the current status of experimental constraints on Einstein’s theory and their prospects for the near future, when advanced gravitational-wave observatories will be operational.

The list of participants is impressive and the program promises this will be a fun and fruitful meeting. For me this will also be a special experience, as at Olemiss I met some of my scientific advisors, some closest collaborators and also good friends.

Oxford has been named by USA Today as one of the top six college towns in the U.S. and it is also known as the hometown of  Nobel-prize winning author William Faulkner, as well as residence of novelist and politician John Grisham. However, as a 23-yr old student, I like to remember myself walking around the Olemiss campus while listening to Afroman's hits, which are definitely less literate but undeniably fun. Here is an example, particularly apt for this occasion:

OK, the lyrics is bitter and somehow sexist but, hell, Mississippi is not only Oxford!

I better stop here and continue preparing my slides for this meeting....

The Gravitational Universe

May 24th, 2013, 12:00 CEST is the deadline for submission of the eLISA white paper to the European Space Agency (ESA).

Quoting the webpage of the project: "Gravity is the dominant force in the universe. We propose the first ever mission to survey the entire universe directly with gravitational waves, to tell us about theformation of structure and galaxies, stellar evolution, the early universe, and the structure and nature of spacetime itself. Most importantly, there will be enormous potential for discovering the parts of the universe that are invisible by other means, such as black holes, the Big Bang, and other, as yet unknown objects. 

The European Space Agency has recently launched the process for choosing candidates for the next large mission launch slots. The first step in this process is the submission of white papers advocating science themes. The eLISA team will submit a compelling science case, which will be addressed by our eLISA mission concept in 2028."

79 authors and 80 contributors have worked intensively to produce this impressive white paper. The proposed mission itself is epic:

"Today we can see the beauty of the universe with modern telescopes in many wavelengths. Observing the universe with gravitational waves—which are analogous to acoustic waves—will allow us to hear the universe for the first time. 

eLISA will be the first observatory to directly detect low frequency gravitational waves. It will measure the relative displacement of free-falling test masses, one million kilometers apart, by means of laser interferometry. This will enable us to determine parameters like mass, spin, orbital elements, and luminosity distance of the sources with unprecedented precision. Large parts of the technologies necessary for such a mission have already been developed, and will be tested in space by LISA Pathfinder in 2015."

Almost 1000 scientists worldwide are supporting the mission, including Stephen Hawking, Edward Witten, Nobel Laureate Gerard 't Hooft and many of the most renewed faculties of Physics and Astrophysics worldwide.

If you want to learn what all of this is for, check out the project webpage!