Nature's Particle Accelerator

The Joint Space Science Institute at the University of Maryland and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is hosting a workshop on "Nature's particle accelerators" on October 22-25, 2012, in historic Annapolis, Maryland. The meeting will address the central scientific issues associated with particle acceleration across the universe.

The following topics will be covered:

• Cosmic ray observations and particle acceleration mechanisms;
• The heliosphere: a local laboratory;
• Pulsars, pulsar winds and pulsar wind nebulae;
• Supernovae shocks; Black holes, AGNs, jets and lobes;
• GRB; Galaxy cluster shocks and turbulence.

Confirmed speakers include: J. Arons, G. Brunetti, A. Bykov, C. Dermer, J. F. Drake, M. Hardcastle, H. Kang, A. Lazarian, R. Lin, E. Nakar, H. Rottgering, A. Spitkovsky, P. J. Vink, E. Waxman.