19th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation (GR19), México, 4–9 July 2010

Abstract

The GR19 meeting was held in México City from 6–9 July 2010. The decision to have the meeting in México was taken during the GR18 meeting in Sydney, Australia in 2007, and represented a great milestone for the scientific community working in the fields related to gravitation in México. This fact was evidenced by the commitment of the most important institutions in México where the field is developed, by the support the meeting received at various governmental levels, and also by a promotional campaign dedicated to educate the public about our subject, which was undertaken by important segments of the gravitational physics community in Mexico. This campaign was named ‘El Mes de Einstein’ or ‘The Einsteinian Month’, and consisted of a series of presentations, talks and movies about topics related to General Relativity which culminated with the public talk of the GR19 meeting (now a traditional aspect of the GR events). This talk was given by George Smoot, Nobel laureate in physics 2006, on the amazing developments around the detailed studies of the Cosmic Microwave Background, and was held at the Nezahualc’oyotl Hall in the main campus of the National Autonomous University of México, which was filled to capacity by enthusiastic crowds of lay people fascinated with the subject.The meeting itself was a very successful one with participants from dozens of countries spanning the five continents, with a rich, varied and informative plenary program. Highlights, featured in this issue, were perhaps the talk by Veronika Hubeny on the fluid/gravity correspondence, a subject that has grown dramatically during the last few years, the lecture by Tarun Souradeep on the enormous potential for discovery offered by the ever increasing accuracy of cosmological observations, the presentation by Jeffrey McClintock, about accreting black holes and the exciting possibility of measuring their spins, the informative review about Loop Quantum Gravity from one of the pioneers of the subject: Carlo Rovelli, and an interesting update on one the recent developments in the ADF/CFT correspondence ‘the condensed matter–gravity connection’ presented by Gary Horowitz, among other excellent contributions. The material presented by other plenary speakers, which is not represented in this issue, has already been widely reported either by themselves or by others.The parallel sessions covered a wide range of topics currently underinvestigation by the worldwide gravity community, and were enthusiastically attended by the conference participants. In the past, ithas been traditional to ask session chairs to write a brief summary of thetalks presented. This time, however, we asked the parallel session chairsto nominate a small number of individual speakers to contribute to this issue.By focusing on a smaller number of topics, we were able to allocate morespace to each, which we hope will provide a more useful overview of at least some of the most exciting physics at GR19. We hope that this novel approach will become a standard feature of future proceedings of the GR meetings.Anther aspect we should mention is the satellite meeting on Quantum Gravity and its preceding PASI Quantum Gravity Summer School held at the Institute for Mathematics, National Autonomous University of México (UNAM), Campus Morelia, Morelia México, from 23 June to 3 July, 2010 which was attended by many students from Mexican institutions, as well as by several participants who came from abroad to learn about this fascinating subject.The organizers want to thank the generous support of the following institutions: the Mexican National Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT), the National Autonomous University of México (UNAM), the Autonomous Metropolitan University of México UAM, the Center for Research and Advanced Studies CINVESTAV, the Mexican Physical Society (SMF), The Mexican Academy of Sciences AMC, The Institute for Nuclear Sciences of UNAM (ICN), the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP), The International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation, the ‘Benemerita’ Autonomous University of Puebla (BAUP), the University Michoacana San Nicolas de Hidalgo, the University of Veracruz, the University of Guadalajara, the University of Guanajuato, the University Iberoamericana, the University of Sinaloa, the University of Zacatecas, the Advanced Institute of Cosmology (IAC), as well as the Government of the Federal District of Mexico City.Don Marolf and Daniel Sudarsky Guest Editors