Texas/Pascos '92: Relativistic Astrophysics and Particle Cosmology [antikvár]

IntroductionThe Texas Symposia on Relativistic Astrophysics have a long tradition since 1963 of biennially forging an interdisciplinary path through an area that borders on astronomy and high-energy physics. The Particles, Strings and Cosmology Symposia are a more recent development begun in 1990 that biennially explores the interdisciplinary aspects of high-energy physics and cosmology. It seemed appropriate to combine these symposia, because of their common themes, into Texas/?ASCOS '92. More than 750 physicists, astrophysicists, and astronomers converged on the University of California, Berkeley campus to participate in the joint symposia.The scientific program consisted of six days of plenary lectures, vwth two three-hour sessions devoted to parallel workshops in order to allow broader participation. In general, high-energy physics and astrophysics topics were interleaved throughout the week. It was realized, however, that much of the PASCOS component would bc of limited interest to the audience, two-thirds of whom were there as Texas participants. Our solution was to commence with a purely PASCOS day on Sunday, December 13, devoted to hard-core particle physics talks. On subsequent days, there was an adiabatic transition to the traditional relativistic astrophysics topics, with a deliberate attempt made to interleaf clusters of astronomy-related talks with some broader-interest high-energy physics overviews. The audience reaction to this admixture was extremely positive. Particle physics, with its innovative, high-budget experiments and high-pow-ered theories but a certain lack of exciting data, and astrophysics, overflowing with a flood of experimental results that still await theoretical interpretation, both benefit from interdisciplinary interactions. Many researchers are crossing the traditional boundaries between these fields. Texas/PASCOS '92 created a usefijl forum for displaying the latest developments as well as providing a unique exposure to the various proponents of diverse experiments and theories in different fields.Several aspects of Texas/PASCOS '92 are not reflected in these proceedings. The unique forum that brought together such a diverse audience gave us an opportunity to hold two pre-conference workshops. One, entitled "Space Science and Astronomy in the Former Soviet Union," was a one-day session in which about 10 FSU scientists, all of whom stayed on for Texas/PASCOS '92, presented their perspectives on current scientific developments and difficulties. A comparable number of U.S. scientists attended, and heard presentations on such satellite projects as RADIOASTRON, RELIC II, SPECTRUM X, ground-based astronomy, and the Baksan Neutrino Observatory. This was followed by a two-day workshop on the cosmic microwave background, attended by more than 150 scientists. The COBE discovery in 1992 of large angular scale fluctuations in the microwave background has triggered immense interest, both experimentally and theoretically, in this topic. The workshop provided a timely and successful overview of microwave background research, and was attended by participants of all groups working in this field. Many of these also participated in Texas/ PASCOS '92, where there was a complementary session on the microwave background.One of our aims is to increase public awareness of fiindamental science and especially of the need to carry out such research. Cosmology has no practical application. It is not funded on the expectation of reaping any substantial dividend or spin-off. Rather, it is in the spirit of scientific inquiry that has excited and inspired human imagination over the millennia. Columbus, Galileo, Pasteur, Newton, and Einstein were giants who explored the frontiers of the known universe. We are grateful to Stephen Hawking, who holds the Lucasian Chair at Cambridge University, for deliv-