Exploring the Dynamic X-ray Universe Forum Successfully Held at ISSI-BJ
The Exploring the dynamic X-ray Universe forum was successfully held at ISSI-BJ on May 6-7, 2014. In total 27 leading scientists from 8 countries participated in this Forum convened by YUAN Weimin (NAOC, China), Julian Osborne (Leicester University, UK), Neil Gehrels (NASA/GSFC, US), George Fraser (Leicester University, UK, passed away on 19th March 2014), ZHANG Shuang-Nan (IHEP, China), and Maurizio Falanga (ISSI-Beijing, China).
The Forum’s main aims were to discuss the importance of the scientific use of soft X-ray wide-field monitoring observatories in the Violent Universe domain as well as to discuss the technologies. In the soft X-ray regime, the novel micro-pore lobster-eye optics provides a promising technology to realize, for the first time, focusing X-ray optics for wide-angle monitors to achieve a good combination of sensitivity and wide field of view. In this context, a soft X-ray all sky monitor called Einstein Probe has been proposed and selected as one of the candidate missions for advanced studies in the space science program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The Forum started with an overview of X-ray all sky monitoring and missions. The participants examined also the prospects of detecting in X-rays the counterparts of gravitational wave events found with the next generation of GW detectors. The forum led also to a better definition of the objectives of the mission.
In addition to stimulating discussions on the science and technology, it has made good international publicity of EP and has in a way accelerated the project to a higher momentum.
An issue of Taikong, the ISSI-BJ magazine will be devoted to the content of this Forum for distribution to the science communities and space science institutions.
