The proceedings will be published as usual by World Scientific. However, the plenary session written contributions together with the chair selected rapporteur reports (both nominally up to 20 pages) will be published in early 2013 in the journal IJMPD (submission deadline of December 31, 2012). The remaining parallel session contributions up to 5 pages in the normal proceedings and poster contributions up to 2 pages (submission deadline of February 28, 2013) will be published together with the previously described contributions as usual as a three volume set by World Scientific.

On Saturday July 7 at the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Melbourne, Australia the CERN scientists will announce their possible discovery of the Higgs particle, until which time news on this topic will be restricted. However, thanks to the time difference between Melbourne and Stockholm, just after the announcement in Melbourne, a special presentation will be made in the Saturday morning MG13 plenary session by two scientists, one from each of the two experimental groups involved, followed by a talk about the theoretical implications of the findings by Luciano Maiani.  The plenary program is available on-line.

During the month of June parallel session chairs will prepare the final program of their sessions. Contact the appropriate chairperson with any questions that arise; their emails are on the conference website. Any abstracts remaining to be submitted should be uploaded as soon as possible to receive consideration by the chairperson. The final parallel session program will be published in late June.

Parallel sessions SG1 – SG2, “GR around the Earth and the Sun”
Chair: Roberto Peron – Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali (IAPS-INAF), Roma, Italy
Neil Ashby – Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA; NIST Affiliate

The session deals with the recent advances in testing general relativity and alternative theories of gravitation around Earth and in the Solar System. This includes testing frame dragging and PPN gravitation with laser ranged satellites as well as with dedicated missions around Earth. Also important are the connections with geodesy and reference frames issues, now well known with the use of GPS. Testing general relativity in the framework of Solar System exploration is another important part, including the ongoing Cassini and the forthcoming BepiColombo. Modeling the dynamical environment of a probe in these different contexts is an important issue, and specific contributions in this direction are welcome. A special attention will be devoted moreover to tests of the Equivalence Principle. The verification of this cornerstone for many gravitational theories – in its various formulations – continues to be at the center of scientific interest, also for the potential impact that violations could have in our overall picture of the Universe.

The meeting website has recently added information about public talks, accompanying person activities, the Tuesday evening reception at City Hall where the Nobel Prize ceremonies are held, and the Wednesday evening banquet location. The plenary program is being updated daily as the speakers submit their abstracts.

The list of 72 parallel sessions (http://www.icra.it/mg/mg13/parallel_sessions.htm)
is now ready and interested participants can register themselves for the meeting and submit a short abstract for the parallel session of their choice. A preliminary list of confirmed invited plenary speakers is also available at http://www.icra.it/mg/mg13/invited_speakers.htm .
Note that no more than two abstracts should be submitted with exactly the same author list in order to keep the parallel sessions manageable.  A few more parallel sessions might be added in the near future.

Early registration at 350€ is now possible extending through May 25, 2012, after which the registration fee will be 400€. The student fee is 150€. Abstracts for parallel session presentations must be submitted by June 15, 2012, but preferably at the time of registration and as early as possible. Chairpersons have been asked to give submitters preliminary judgments of abstracts for oral and poster presentation requests as they are received in order to create their programs, so delaying submission of an abstract decreases its chances of receiving an oral presentation. If a session receives too many worthy abstracts for oral presentation in one afternoon session, there is the possibility of  splitting it into two sessions, while some pressure will be relieved by having poster sessions to allow presentation of excess abstracts.

MG13 will take place July 1-7, 2012 at Stockholm University in Stockholm, Sweden. Preregistration will take place Sunday, July 1, and the meeting will officially open Monday morning with the Marcel Grossmann awards announcement. During the six day conference a wide variety of topics will be discussed in the morning plenary sessions beginning with mathematical topics on Monday, quantum aspects of gravity on Tuesday, precision tests of general relativity on Wednesday, relativistic astrophysics on Thursday, cosmology and astroparticle physics on Friday and the latest scientific news and the history of physics Saturday. There will be five plenary lectures each morning and up to twenty parallel sessions in the four weekday afternoons excluding Wednesday, which is left free for a trip and the evening conference banquet. The plenary lectures will be held in the Aula Magna lecture hall and the parallel sessions at the AlbaNova University Center, both easily reachable by public transportation from the city center.

In addition to the Wednesday evening banquet, there will be a reception by the mayor of Stockholm Tuesday evening, and popular level science lectures open to the participants and their accompanying persons and to the general public on Monday, Thursday and Friday evenings.

We have added some additional topics to the original program and parallel sessions. In particular in view of the expected July 4 announcement of the LHC at the Rochester conference in Australia and its astrophysical implications, we have added a special parallel session on astroparticle physics on Friday afternoon, chaired by Carlo Dionisi and Luciano Maiani who will report on these developments in the Saturday morning plenary session.

Since 1975, the Marcel Grossmann Meetings (on Recent Developments in Theoretical and Experimental General Relativity, Gravitation, and Relativistic Field Theories) have been organized in order to provide opportunities for discussing recent advances in gravitation, general relativity and relativistic field theories, emphasizing mathematical foundations, physical predictions and experimental tests. The objective of these meetings is to elicit exchange among scientists that may deepen our understanding of spacetime structures as well as to review the status of ongoing experiments aimed at testing Einstein’s theory of gravitation either from the ground or from space.

The list of 70 parallel sessions is now ready and interested participants can register themselves for the meeting and submit a short abstract for the parallel session of their choice. A preliminary list of confirmed invited plenary speakers is also available.

Early registration at 350€ will be possible starting February 10, 2012, extending through May 25th, 2012, after which the registration fee will be 400€. The student fee is 150€. Abstracts for parallel session presentations must be submitted by June 1, 2012, but preferably at the time of registration.

MG13 will take place July 1-7, 2012 at Stockholm University in Stockholm, Sweden. Preregistration will take place Sunday, July 1, and the meeting will officially open Monday morning with the Marcel Grossmann awards announcement. During the six day conference a wide variety of topics will be discussed in the morning plenary sessions beginning with mathematical topics on Monday, quantum aspects of gravity on Tuesday, precision tests of general relativity on Wednesday, relativistic astrophysics on Thursday, cosmology and astroparticle physics on Friday and the latest scientific news and the history of physics Saturday. There will be five plenary lectures each morning and up to twenty parallel sessions in the four weekday afternoons excluding Wednesday, which is left free for a trip and the evening conference banquet. The plenary lectures will be held in the Aula Magna lecture hall and the parallel sessions at the AlbaNova University Center, both easily reachable by public transportation from the city center.

Since 1975, the Marcel Grossmann Meetings (on Recent Developments in Theoretical and Experimental General Relativity, Gravitation, and Relativistic Field Theories) have been organized in order to provide opportunities for discussing recent advances in gravitation, general relativity and relativistic field theories, emphasizing mathematical foundations, physical predictions and experimental tests. The objective of these meetings is to elicit exchange among scientists that may deepen our understanding of spacetime structures as well as to review the status of ongoing experiments aimed at testing Einstein’s theory of gravitation either from the ground or from space.

MG13 will take place at Stockholm University in Stockholm, Sweden on July 1-7, 2012. Preregistration will take place Sunday, July 1, and the meeting will officially open Monday morning, July 2, when the Marcel Grossmann prizes will be awarded. During the six day conference a wide variety of topics will be discussed in the morning plenary sessions beginning with mathematical topics on Monday, quantum aspects of gravity on Tuesday, precision tests of general relativity on Wednesday, relativistic astrophysics on Thursday, cosmology and astroparticle physics on Friday and the latest scientific news and the history of physics Saturday. There will be five plenary lectures each morning and up to twenty parallel sessions in the four weekday afternoons excluding Wednesday, which is left free for a trip and the evening conference banquet. The plenary lectures will be held in the Aula Magna lecture hall and the parallel sessions at the AlbaNova University Center, both easily reachable by public transportation from the city center.

The local organizing committee is chaired by Prof. Kjell Rosquist. Together with the chairs of the International Organizing Committee, Prof. Remo Ruffini, and the International Coordinating Committee, Prof. Robert Jantzen, the first actions will be to announce a first draft of the plenary and parallel session programs including some chairpersons who have already volunteered, with others to be added later.

Major international sponsors, in addition to the Swedish universities, are IUPAP, ICRA and ICRANet, ICTP, TWAS, and all the universities and research centers participating in the joint Ph.D. program in relativistic Astrophysics: the IRAP PhD Erasmus Mundus program.

Early registration at 350€ will be available online December 15th 2011 through June 15th 2012, after which the registration fee will be 400€. The student fee is 150€.

New members have been added to the International Committees and the final version of the poster is now available for download at the meeting website.

Since 1975, the Marcel Grossmann Meetings (on Recent Developments in Theoretical and Experimental General Relativity, Gravitation, and Relativistic Field Theories) have been organized in order to provide opportunities for discussing recent advances in gravitation, general relativity and relativistic field theories, emphasizing mathematical foundations, physical predictions and experimental tests. The objective of these meetings is to elicit exchange among scientists that may deepen our understanding of spacetime structures as well as to review the status of ongoing experiments aimed at testing Einstein’s theory of gravitation either from the ground or from space.

The International Organizing Committee chaired by Remo Ruffini, the International Coordinating Committee chaired by Robert Jantzen, and the Local Organizing Committee chaired by Kjell Rosquist are pleased to announce the Thirteenth Marcel Grossmann Meeting on Recent Developments in Theoretical and Experimental General Relativity, Gravitation, and Relativistic Field Theory at the University of Stockholm in Stockholm, Sweden July 1 – 7, 2012.

As information becomes available, it will be posted at the
meeting website linked to this page:
http://www.icra.it/MG/

Regards,
Remo Ruffini, University of Rome
Robert Jantzen, Villanova University
Kjell Rosquist, University of Stockholm