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Appendixes
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ct~v~es of the Committee on
ravitationat Physics
The Committee on Gravitational Physics (COP) held its first meeting on
October 7-9, 1997, at the National Research Council's facility in Washington,
D.C. The first part of the meeting was devoted to gathering information on
gravitational physics projects and programs. The committee discussed letters and
e-mail that it had received in response to a call for comments. The committee
then heard presentations on the following topics:
· NASA gravitational physics activities. Alan gunner, Science Program
Director, Structure and Evolution of the Universe (SEU), and Hashima Hasan,
Discipline Scientist, Ultraviolet, Visible, and Gravitational Astrophysics.
.
Astrophysics and gravitational physics and the recommendations of the
newly released Structure and Evolution of the Universe Science Roadmap pre-
pared for NASA's Office of Space Science by an advisory committee chaired by
Roger Blandford, Caltech.
· The National Science Foundation's (NSF's) gravitational physics pro-
gram. David Berley, NSF Program Manager for the Laser Interferometer Gravi-
tational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).
· The LIGO project. Barry C. garish, Principal Investigator.
· The Gravity Probe B relativity mission. C.W. Francis Everitt, Stanford
University, Principal Investigator.
· The Satellite Test of the Equivalence Principle (STEP) and Mini-STEP
missions. C.W. Francis Everitt, Stanford University, Principal Investigator, and
Paul Worden, Stanford University, Co-Investigator.
101
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102
APPENDIX A
· The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). Peter Bender, JILA,
Principal Investigator.
· Resonant mass gravitational wave detectors. William Hamilton, Louisi-
ana State University.
· The Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP). Gary Hinshaw, Astrophysi
cist, Goddard Space Flight Center.
.
In the second part of the meeting, held in closed session, the committee
identified key questions in the field. The committee concluded by drafting an
outline for its report.
The COP held its second meeting at the National Research Council's facility
in Washington, D.C., on February 20-22, 1998. The first day of the meeting was
conducted entirely in open session and began with greetings and brief remarks
from the committee chair, Prof. James Hartle. This was followed by a brief
explanation by Board on Physics and Astronomy (BPA) Director Donald C.
Shapero regarding the National Research Council's response to the new law
concerning amendments to the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The COP
heard the following presentations:
· Richard Isaacson, Program Manager for gravitational physics at NSF,
discussed the opportunities in gravitational physics experiment, computation,
theory, international collaboration, university training, and the LIGO project.
.
P.K. Williams, Senior Program Officer, Office of Energy Research, De-
partment of Energy (DOE), explained the workings of the joint DOE-NASA-
NSF Scientific Advisory Group for Non-Accelerator Physics (SAGENAP) and
the DOE activities in non-accelerator physics connected to cosmology and gravi-
tation.
· Committee member Eric Adelberger presented a summary of the recent
laboratory experiments to measure to high accuracy Newton' s gravitational con-
stant, G. and Earth' s gravitational acceleration, g.
· Committee members Clifford Will and Peter Michelson presented current
and proposed gravitational experiments based in space, such as the lunar laser
ranging experiment, the Gravity Probe B mission, OMEGA, the "Galileo Galilei"
equivalence principle mission, the Satellite Test of the Equivalence Principle
(STEP), the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), and others.
· Committee members Ramesh Narayan, David Spergel, and Joseph Taylor
led an astrophysical discussion of the estimated number of sources of gravita-
tional waves that would be detectable by LIGO.
The next 2 days' sessions were closed. They began with a review of the
previous day's items, including a continuation of the estimate for LIGO source
counts. The discussion of draft chapters of the report and revisions to drafts was
followed by a consideration of the goals and opportunities of the field and a
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APPENDIX A
103
preliminary formulation of recommendations. The committee discussed a draft
section on gravitational physics that was sent to the Board on Physics and As-
tronomy for inclusion in the forthcoming Overview report of the physics survey
Physics in a New Era (to be published by the National Academy Press in 2000~.
The CGP also discussed themes for a research briefing on gravitational physics
and the schedule for completing the draft report.
The CGP requested input from the community of gravitational physicists in
a number of ways:
.
A description of the COP's charge and activities was published in the
newsletter of the American Physical Society' s (APS' s) Topical Group on Gravi-
tation. This newsletter is available to gravitational physicists worldwide, both in
print form and on the Los Alamos e-print server.
.
A similar notice was posted on the e-mail service maintained by Queen
Mary College in London which reaches hundreds of gravitational physicists
around the world.
.
Requests for input were made through standard announcement services of
the Division of Particles and Fields of the APS, the Precision Measurements
Topical Group of the APS, and the American Astronomical Society.
· The committee chair, J. Hartle, made presentations and solicited input at
two meetings of gravitational physicists: the 1998 Pacific Coast Gravity Meeting
in Eugene, Oregon, and the April 1998 meeting of the American Physical Society
in Columbus, Ohio.
In total the CGP received written responses from approximately 20 scien-
tists. A great many of these were thoughtful and helpful. All electronic and
written input was distributed to the members of the CGP and duly considered in
its deliberations.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
gravitational physicists