Exploring the Dynamic X-ray Universe Forum 

The Exploring the dynamic X-ray Universe forum was held at ISSI-BJ on May 6-7, 2014. In total 27 leading scientists from 8 countries participated in this Forum convened by Weimin Yuan (NAOC, China), Julian Osborne (Leicester University, UK), Neil Gehrels (NASA/GSFC, US), George Fraser (†19th March, 2014, Leicester University, UK), Shuang-Nan Zhang (IHEP, China), 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. This forum led also to a better definition of the objectives of the mission. Therefore, the importance of this forum has been recognized and appreciate by all the participants. In addition to all those very fruitful and 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 is devoted to the content of this Forum for distribution to the science communities and space science institutions.The magazine can be downloaded here.

Download the High Resolution picture here