Astrophysical Frontiers in the Next Decade and Beyond
Event Overview
New research facilities and the scientific vision outlined by New Worlds, New Horizons have motivated the exploration of vast new discovery space, and astrophysics has seen extraordinary progress in the past decade, opening new frontiers across many fields. Astronomers have acquired the first high-resolution images of planet formation in a Solar System analog, probed the physics of energetic star-forming galaxies into the epoch of reionization, directly detected gravitational radiation from merging black holes, and discovered enigmatic new transients, such as Fast Radio Bursts.
Sponsored by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, this conference will bring together a substantial cross-section of the astronomical community to discuss how to effectively address the highest priority astrophysical questions of our time. Plenary sessions will feature invited speakers, and three parallel sessions will address
(1) Exoplanets, the Solar System and the origins of Stars, Planets and Life,
(2) Galaxy Evolution Mechanisms, and
(3) Black Holes & Transient Phenomena.
Each session will canvass recent observational and theoretical progress, address key unanswered questions, and motivate future research directions in the context of next-generation facilities that would span the electromagnetic spectrum, including a Next Generation Very Large Array, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array-2030, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, 30m-class optical-infrared telescopes, the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, and the Square Kilometre Array.
