Have you ever wondered what could happen when we discover another communicating species outside the Earth? This book addresses this question in all its complexity. In addition to the physical barriers for communication, such as the enormous distances where a message can take centuries to reach its recipient, the book also examines the biological problems of communicating between species, the problems of identifying a non-Terrestrial intelligence, and the ethical, religious, legal and other problems of conducting discussions across light years. Most of the book is concerned with issues that could impinge on your life: how do we share experiences with ETI? Can we make shared laws? Could we trade? Would they have religion? The book addresses these and related issues, identifying potential barriers to communication and suggesting ways we can overcome them. The book explores this topic through reference to human experience, through analogy and thought experiment, while relying on what is known to-date about ourselves, our world, and the cosmos we live in.

This PhD thesis details the development of a new 1D ionospheric model to describe the upper atmospheres of extrasolar giant plants. The upper atmospheres of Hot Jupiters are subject to extreme radiation conditions that can result in rapid atmospheric escape. The composition and structure of these planets' upper atmospheres are affected by high-energy emissions from the host star. The nature of these emissions depends on the stellar type and age, making them important factors in understanding the behaviour of exoplanetary atmospheres.

Written by a leading expert, this monograph presents recent developments on supernova remnants, with the inclusion of results from various satellites and ground-based instruments. The book details the physics and evolution of supernova remnants, as well as provides an up-to-date account of recent multiwavelength results. Supernova remnants provide vital clues about the actual supernova explosions from X-ray spectroscopy of the supernova material, or from the imprints the progenitors had on the ambient medium supernova remnants are interacting with - all of which the author discusses in great detail. The way in which supernova remnants are classified, is reviewed and explained early on. A chapter is devoted to the related topic of pulsar wind nebulae, and neutron stars associated with supernova remnants. The book also includes an extended part on radiative processes, collisionless shock physics and cosmic-ray acceleration, making this book applicable to a wide variety of astronomical sub-disciplines. With its coverage of fundamental physics and careful review of the state of the field, the book serves as both textbook for advanced students and as reference for researchers in the field.

With contributions by leading theoreticians, this book presents the discoveries of hitherto hidden connections between seemingly unrelated fields of fundamental physics. The topics range from cosmology and astrophysics to nuclear-, particle- and heavy-ion science. A current example concerns the sensitivity of gravitational wave spectra to the phase structure of dense nuclear and quark matter in binary neutron star collisions. The contributions by Hanauske and Stoecker as well as Banik and Bandyopadhyay relate the consequent insights to hot dense nuclear matter created in supernova explosions and in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. Studies of the equation of state for neutron stars are also presented, as are those for nuclear matter in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. Other reviews focus on QCD-thermodynamics, charmed mesons in the quark-gluon plasma, nuclear theory, extensions to the standard general theory of relativity, new experimental developments in heavy ion collisions and renewable energy networks. The book will appeal to advanced students and researchers seeking a broad view of current challenges in theoretical physics and their interconnections.

This outstanding thesis by Dominic Bowman provides a thorough investigation of long-standing questions as to whether amplitude modulation is astrophysical, whether it offers insights into pulsating stars, and whether simple beating of modes with stable amplitudes is unrecognised because of a lack of frequency resolution. In this thesis, the author studied a uniform sample of 983 delta Scuti stars-the most common type of main-sequence heat engine pulsator-that were observed nearly continuously for 4 years at stunning photometric precision of only a few parts per million by the Kepler space mission. With no mission planned to supersede the Kepler 4-year data set, this thesis will stand as the definitive study of these questions for many years. With revolutionary photometric data from the planet-hunting Kepler space mission, asteroseismic studies have been carried out on many hundreds of main-sequence solar-type stars and about 10,000 red giants. It is easy to understand why those stochastically driven stars have highly variable amplitudes. Over much of the rest of the Hertzsprung-Russell (HR) diagram, stellar pulsations are driven by heat mechanisms, which are much more regular than the stochastic driving in solar-like pulsators. Yet for decades, amplitude and frequency modulation of pulsation modes have been observed in almost all types of heat-driven pulsating stars. The author shows that the amplitude and frequency modulation are astrophysical, and he has investigated their implications and prospects to provide new insights into the delta Scuti stars and the many other types of heat-engine pulsators across the HR diagram.

This book is devoted to the scientific legacy of Professor Victor Ambartsumian - one of the distinguished scientists of the last century. He obtained very essential results not only in astrophysics, but also in mathematics and theoretical physics. One can recall his fundamental results concerning the Sturm-Liouville inverse problem, quantum field theory, structure of atomic nuclei etc. Nevertheless, his revolutionary ideas in astrophysics and corresponding results are known more widely and have predetermined the further development of this science. The concept about the activity phenomena and objects' evolution, particularly, determination of the age of our Galaxy, ideas about the stars' formation nowadays in stellar associations, the activity of galactic nuclei appeared to be exceptionally fruitful. These directions are being elaborated at many astronomical centers all over the world.

The introduction of spin is believed to be a necessary tool if one wishes to quantize general relativity. Then the main problem is to see if the introduction of spin generalizing the general relativity from a geometric point of view, i.e. through the concept of torsion, can be experimentally verified.

The reader can find in this book both theoretical and experimental arguments which show the necessity for the introduction of spin, and then of torsion, in gravity. In fact, torsion constitutes the more natural and simple way to introduce spin in general relativity. For that reason it is of fundamental importance to see if there are some experiences that indicate -- if not directly, then at least indirectly -- the presence of torsion. This book presents a discussion on experiments with a polarized-mass torsion pendulum, the search for galactic dark matter interacting with a spin pendulum, a description of a space-based method for determination of the gravitational constant and space-based measurements of spin in gravity, as well as a discussion on theoretical arguments, for instance the nature of torsion and nonmetricity, the viability of gravitational theories with spin -- torsion and spin-spin interaction, many-dimensional gravitational theories with torsion, spinors on curved spaces, the spinors in real space -- time, etc.

We know that until now there has been no evidence for torsion, but this fact cannot prevent us from considering in some detail this implement of research that seems to be important from both a geometrical and a physical point of view.

Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, published in 1915, made a remarkable prediction: gravitational radiation. Just like light (electromagnetic radiation), gravity could travel through space as a wave and affect any objects it encounters by alternately compressing and expanding them. However, there was a problem. The force of gravity is around a trillion, trillion, trillion times weaker than electromagnetism so the calculated compressions and expansions were incredibly small, even for gravity waves resulting from a catastrophic astrophysical event such as a supernova explosion in our own galaxy. Discouraged by this result, physicists and astronomers didn't even try to detect these tiny, tiny effects for over 50 years. Then, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, two events occurred which started the hunt for gravity waves in earnest. The first was a report of direct detection of gravity waves thousands of times stronger than even the most optimistic calculation. Though ultimately proved wrong, this result started scientists thinking about what instrumentation might be necessary to detect these waves. The second was an actual, though indirect, detection of gravitational radiation due to the effects it had on the period of rotation of two 'neutron stars' orbiting each other. In this case, the observations were in exact accord with predictions from Einstein's theory, which confirmed that a direct search might ultimately be successful. Nevertheless, it took another 40 years of development of successively more sensitive detectors before the first real direct effects were observed in 2015, 100 years after gravitational waves were first predicted. This is the story of that hunt, and the insight it is producing into an array of topics in modern science, from the creation of the chemical elements to insights into the properties of gravity itself.

This volume is the updated and extended translation of the Russian original. It presents the results of observations of solar activity and its effects in the Earth space environment carried out from July 2001 to December 2005 on board the CORONAS-F space mission. The general characteristics of the CORONAS-F scientific payload are provided with a description of the principal experiments. The main results focus on the global oscillations of the Sun (p-modes), solar corona, solar flares, solar cosmic rays, Earth s radiation belts, and upper atmosphere. The book will be welcomed by students, post-graduates, and scientists working in the field of solar and solar-terrestrial physics.

This English edition is supplemented by sections presenting new results of the SPIRIT and TESIS experiments under the CORONAS solar program, as well as from the SONG experiment onboard the CORONAS-F satellite.

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In 1988, in an article on the analysis of the measurements of the variations in the radial velocities of a number of stars, Campbell, Walker, and Yang reported an - teresting phenomenon;the radial velocity variations of Cephei seemed to suggest the existence of a Jupiter-like planet around this star. This was a very exciting and, at the same time, very surprising discovery. It was exciting because if true, it would have marked the detection of the ?rst planet outside of our solar system. It was surprising because the planet-hosting star is the primary of a binary system with a separation less than 19 AU, a distance comparable to the planetary distances in our solar system. The moderatelyclose orbit of the stellar companionof Cephei raised questions about the reality of its planet. The skepticism over the interpretation of the results (which was primarily based on the idea that binary star systems with small sepa- tions would not be favorable places for planet formation) became so strong that in a subsequent paper in 1992, Walker and his colleagues suggested that the planet in the Cephei binary might not be real, and the variations in the radial velocity of this star might have been due to its chromospheric activities.

Accretion flows, winds and jets of compact astrophysical objects and stars are generally described within the framework of hydrodynamical and magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) flows. Analytical analysis of the problem provides profound physical insights, which are essential for interpreting and understanding the results of numerical simulations. Providing such a physical understanding of MHD Flows in Compact Astrophysical Objects is the main goal of this book, which is an updated translation of a successful Russian graduate textbook. The book provides the first detailed introduction into the method of the Grad-Shafranov equation, describing analytically the very broad class of hydrodynamical and MHD flows. It starts with the classical examples of hydrodynamical accretion onto relativistic and nonrelativistic objects. The force-free limit of the Grad-Shafranov equation allows us to analyze in detail the physics of the magnetospheres of radio pulsars and black holes, including the Blandford-Znajek process of energy extraction from a rotating black hole immersed in an external magnetic field. Finally, on the basis of the full MHD version of the Grad-Shafranov equation the author discusses the problems of jet collimation and particle acceleration in Active Galactic Nuclei, radio pulsars, and Young Stellar Objects. The comparison of the analytical results with numerical simulations demonstrates their good agreement. Assuming that the reader is familiar with the basic physical and mathematical concepts of General Relativity, the author uses the 3+1 split approach which allows the formulation of all results in terms of physically clear language of three dimensional vectors. The book contains detailed derivations of equations, numerous exercises, and an extensive bibliography. It therefore serves as both an introductory text for graduate students and a valuable reference work for researchers in the field.

The origin and evolution of interplanetary dust have been extensively discussed ever since the 1960s when a series of meetings began which brought together the interplanetary dust community. More recently, during the 1980s, new knowledge has emerged from comprehensive studies of cometary flybys and from infrared space observations. At present new, in-situ explorations of interplanetary dust are providing some promising results. This work begins with investigations of interplanetary dust by space and Earth environment studies, by physics and chemical analysis, and by zodiacal light and optical studies. Topics related to cometary dust, meteoroids and meteor streams, and circumplanetary dust, which are indeed linked to the evolution of interplanetary dust, are then presented. Finally, the origin of interplanetary dust is tracked back to comets or asteroids and to interstellar or circumstellar dust. A summary demonstrates that interplanetary dust studies are thriving and may provide a clearer understadnign of the formation of the solar system.

This thesis combines a theoretical model of galaxy formation with a treatment of the radiative transfer in the titular dusty star-forming galaxies. Embedding this within the well-established CDM (Lambda cold dark matter) cosmology, the author was able to simulate galaxy populations from which realistic observational images were synthesised. Based on further analysis, he shows that there is a good correspondence with observations from new instruments such as the SCUBA2 bolometric camera and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) interferometer, and reveals some novel aspects of this exciting galaxy population. In particular, he shows that blending of these galaxies in the imaging produces an artificial enhancement in their clustering, which he dubs "blending bias". This implies that the host dark matter halo masses for these galaxies have previously been significantly overestimated. He also presents amongst the first predictions from a galaxy formation model for observations of these galaxies that will be made by the James Webb Space Telescope (the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope).

The role of laboratory research and simulations in advancing our understanding of solar system ices (including satellites, KBOs, comets, and giant planets) is becoming increasingly important. Understanding ice surface radiation processing, particle and radiation penetration depths, surface and subsurface chemistry, morphology, phases, density, conductivity, etc., are only a few examples of the inventory of issues that are being addressed by Earth-based laboratory research.

As a response to the growing need for cross-disciplinary dialog and communication in the Planetary Ices science community, this book aims to achieve direct dialog and foster focused collaborations among the observational, modeling, and laboratory research communities.

This book presents timely work on the nature of the physical processes underpinning two of the basic characteristics of the gas structure in the innermost region of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN): ionized outflows and emission line regions. In addition, it describes physics-based methods for estimating the density of the astrophysical plasma surrounding AGN. All numerical computations of the photoionized gas employ the most advanced codes available (CLOUDY and TITAN). Calculations of the radiative transfer are based on the assumption of thermal and ionization equilibrium. Promising preliminary examples of comparison with current observations are included for several individual AGN. All of them suggest that the absorbing/emitting gas should have a density on the order of 1012 cm-3. Future observations will provide more objects to verify these results, and will allow us to put constraints on the launch radius of ionized outflows and therefore on the mass loading and kinetic energy outflow rates. These rates, in turn, are crucial to estimating whether the outflows have a significant feedback impact on star formation and metal enrichment in the interstellar medium of the host galaxy. In closing, the book discusses a representative example of applying powerful photoionization techniques to explain the complex physics of the AGN environment.

Fulleranes are a special class of carbon molecules derived from fullerenes whose double bonds are partially or at least theoretically fully saturated by hydrogen. The hydrogenation changes the chemical properties of fullerenes which can become susceptible to substitution reactions as opposed to addition reactions to the double bonds (present in common fullerenes). One of the most intriguing aspects of fulleranes is the fact that they have been thought to exist in the interstellar medium or even in certain circumstellar media.

"Fulleranes: The Hydrogenated Fullerenes" presents the state of the art research, synthesis and properties of these molecules.This book also includes astrophysicists' and astrochemists' expectations regarding the presence of these molecules in space.

This volume documents the contributions presented at the Seventh Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society (Sociedad Espanola de Astronomia, SEA). The event bought together 301 participants who presented 161 contributed talks and 120 posters, the greatest numbers up to now. The fact that most exciting items of the current astronomical research were addressed in the meeting proofs the good health of the SEA, a consolidated organization founded fifteen years ago in Barcelona. Two plenary sessions of the meeting were devoted to the approved entrance of Spain as a full member of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and to the imminent first light of the greatest telescope in the world, the GTC (Gran Telescopio de Canarias), milestones that will certainly lead the Spanish Astronomy in the next future."

Astronomical jets are key astrophysical phenomena observed in gamma-ray bursts, active galactic nuclei or young stars. Research on them has largely occurred within the domains of astronomical observations, astrophysical modeling and numerical simulations, but the recent advent of high energy density facilities has added experimental control to jet studies.

Front-line research on jet launching and collimation requires a highly interdisciplinary approach and an elevated level of sophistication. Bridging the gaps between pure magnetohydrodynamics, thermo-chemical evolution, high angular resolution spectro-imaging and laboratory experiments is no small matter. This volume strives to bridge those very gaps. It offers a series of lectures which, taken as whole, act as a thorough reference for the foundations of this discipline. These lectures address the following:

- laboratory jets physics from laser and z-pinch plasma experiments,
- the magnetohydrodynamic theory of relativistic and non-relativistic stationary jets,
- heating mechanisms in magnetohydrodynamic jets, from the solar magnetic reconnection to the molecular shock heating perspectives,
- atomic and molecular microphysics of jet shocked material.

In addition to the lectures, the book offers, in closing, a presentation of a series of observational diagnostics, thus allowing for the recovery of basic physical quantities from jet emission lines.

1-Pre-White Dwarf Evolution and White Dwarf Cooling.- New pre-white dwarf evolutionary tracks.- Influence of the phase diagram in the cooling of white dwarfs.- PG1159 stars and the PNN-white dwarf connection.- Analysis of the soft X-ray data from the central star of NGC 7293.- Planetary Nebulae Nuclei with white dwarf spectra.- Atmospheric parameters of subluminous B stars.- White dwarf space densities and birth rates reconsidered.- A spectroscopic determination of the mass distribution of DA white dwarfs.- The age and formation of the Galaxy: clues from the white dwarf luminosity function.- Early results from the ROSAT Wide Field Camera.- The stellar component of the Hamburg Schmidt Survey.- White dwarfs in the Hamburg Schmidt Survey.- 2-Asteroseismology of White Dwarfs.- Asteroseismology of white dwarf stars with the Whole Earth Telescope.- A measurement of the evolutionary timescale of the cool white dwarf G117-B15A with WET.- On the interpretation of the dP/dt measurement in G117-B15A.- The boundaries of the ZZ Ceti instability strip.- Long term variations in ZZ Cetis: G191-16 and HL Tau 76.- Predicting the white dwarf light curves.- A wavelet analysis of the ZZ Ceti star G191 16.- An adiabatic survey for ZZ Ceti stars based on a finite element code.- A study of period change rates in post-AGB stars I. PG 1159-035.- Nonadiabatic nonradial pulsations for DAV white dwarf stars.- 3-Atmospheres and Envelopes.- NLTE Analysis of four PG1159 stars.- A search for trace amounts of hydrogen in DB stars.- Abundances of trace heavy elements in hot DA white dwarfs.- New results on radiative forces on iron in hot white dwarfs.- The effective temperature of the DBV's, and the sensitivity of DB model atmospheres to input physics.- The modified hydrostatic equilibrium equations for stratified high gravity stellar atmospheres.- The DBAQ G35-26.- LP 790-29: preliminary model atmospheres for this strongly polarized carbon white dwarf.- Some effect of the UV radiation from white dwarfs on the accretion of interstellar hydrogen.- Convection in white dwarfs: application of CM theory to helium envelope WDs.- Abundances in cool DZA and DAZ white dwarfs: new results using laboratory damping constants.- Evidence for fractionated accretion of metals on cool white dwarfs.- A new look at old friends: 40 Eri B and GD 323.- The Lyman Alpha line wing in hydrogen-rich white dwarf atmospheres.- Atmospheric parameters for DA white dwarfs in the vicinity of the ZZ Ceti instability strip.- Space Telescope observations of white dwarf stars.- 4-White Dwarfs in Binaries.- A deep spectroscopic survey of white dwarfs in common proper motion binaries.- Double degenerate common proper motion binaries.- Close binary white dwarfs.- New results on cataclysmic variable white dwarfs.- Whole Earth Telescope observations of the interacting white dwarf binary system AM CVn: first results.- IUE observations of V803 Cen in high and low states.- Whole Earth Telescope observations of PG1346+082.- On the origin of LMXRBS: the ONEMG case.

This book presents a direct measurement of quantum back action, or radiation pressure noise, on a macroscopic object at room temperature across a broad bandwidth in the audio range. This noise source was predicted to be a limitation for gravitational wave interferometers in the 1980s, but it has evaded direct characterization in the gravitational wave community due to the inherent difficult of reducing thermal fluctuations below the quantum back action level. This back action noise is a potential limitation in Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo, and Cripe's experiment has provided a platform for the demonstration of quantum measurement techniques that will allow quantum radiation pressure noise to be reduced in these detectors. The experimental techniques Cripe developed for this purpose are also applicable to any continuous measurement operating near the quantum limit, and could lead to the possibility of observing non-classical behavior of macroscopic objects.

Insightful, good-humored essays on the possibilities of alien life and the uses of space exploration, based on an astrobiologist's everyday conversations with his fellow humans-taxi drivers, to be precise. If you've ever sat in the back seat of a taxi, you know that cabbies like to talk. Sports or politics, your job or theirs, taxi drivers are fine conversationalists on just about any topic. And when the passenger is astrobiologist Charles Cockell, that topic is usually space and what, if anything, lives out there. Inspired by conversations with drivers all over the world, Taxi from Another Planet tackles the questions that everyday people have about the cosmos and our place in it. Will we understand aliens? What if there isn't life out in the universe? Is Mars our Plan B? And why is the government spending tax dollars on space programs anyway? Each essay in this genial collection takes questions like these as a starting point on the way to a range of insightful, even poignant, observations. Cockell delves into debates over the inevitability of life and looks to both human history and scientific knowledge to consider what first contact will be like and what we can expect from spacefaring societies. He also offers a forceful argument for the sympathies between space exploration and environmentalism. A shrewd and entertaining foray into the most fundamental mysteries, Taxi from Another Planet brings together the wisdom of scientific experts and their fellow citizens of Earth, the better to understand how life might unfold elsewhere.

This book provides an introduction to the physics of interstellar gas in the Galaxy. It deals with the diffuse interstellar medium which supplies a complex environment for exploring the neutral gas content of a galaxy like the Milky Way and the techniques necessary for studying this non-stellar component. After an initial exposition of the phases of the interstellar medium and the role of gas in a spiral galaxy, the authors discuss the transition from atomic to molecular gas. They then consider basic radiative transfer and molecular spectroscopy with particular emphasis on the molecules useful for studying low-density molecular gas. Observational techniques for investigating the gas and the dust component of the diffuse interstellar medium throughout the electromagnetic spectrum are explored emphasizing results from the recent Herschel and Planck missions. A brief exposition on dust in the diffuse interstellar medium is followed by a discussion of molecular clouds in general and high-latitude molecular clouds in particular. Ways of calibrating CO observations with the molecular hydrogen content of a cloud are examined along with the dark molecular gas controversy. High-latitude molecular clouds are considered in detail as vehicles for applying the techniques developed in the book. Given the transient nature of diffuse and translucent molecular clouds, the role of turbulence in the origin and dynamics of these objects is examined in some detail. The book is targeted at graduate students or postdocs who are entering the field of interstellar medium studies.

This thesis makes two important contributions to plasma physics. The first is the extension of the seminal theoretical works of Spitzer and Braginskii, which describe the basics of particle interactions in plasma, to relativistic systems. Relativistic plasmas have long been studied in high-energy astrophysics and are becoming increasingly attainable in the laboratory. The second is the design of a new class of photon-photon collider, which is the first capable of detecting the Breit-Wheeler process. Though it offers the simplest way for light to be converted into matter, the process has never been detected in the 80 years since its theoretical prediction. The experimental scheme proposed here exploits the radiation used in inertial confinement fusion experiments and could in principle be implemented in one of several current-generation facilities.

'A fascinating exploration of how we learned what matter really is, and the journey matter takes from the Big Bang, through exploding stars, ultimately to you and me.' - Sean Carroll, author of Something Deeply Hidden 'If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.' - Carl Sagan We probably all have a vague idea of how to make an apple pie: mix flour and butter, throw in some apples and you're probably most of the way there, right? Think again. Making an apple pie from scratch requires ingredients that definitely aren't available in the supermarket, ovens that can reach temperatures of trillions of degrees, and a preparation time of 13.8 billion years. Inspired by Sagan's famous line, Harry Cliff ventures out in search of the ultimate apple pie recipe, tracing the ingredients of our universe through the hearts of dying stars and back in time to a tiny fraction of a second after our universe began. Along the way, he confronts some really big questions: What is matter really made of? How does the stuff around us escape annihilation in the fearsome heat of the Big Bang? And will we ever be able to understand the very first moments of our universe? In pursuit of answers, Cliff ventures to the largest underground research facility in the world, deep beneath Italy's Gran Sasso mountains, where scientists gaze into the heart of the Sun using the most elusive of particles, the ghostly neutrino. He visits CERN in Switzerland to explore the 'Antimatter Factory' where this stuff of science fiction is manufactured daily (and we're close to knowing whether it falls upwards). And he reveals what the latest data from the Large Hadron Collider may be telling us about the fundamental ingredients of matter. Along the way, Cliff illuminates the history of physics, chemistry, and astronomy that brought us to our present understanding of the world, while offering readers a front-row seat to one of the most dramatic intellectual journeys human beings have ever embarked on. A transfixing deep dive into origins of our world, How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch doesn't just put the makeup of our universe under the microscope, but the awe-inspiring, improbable fact that it exists at all.

The Workshop "Science with the VLT in the ELT Era" held in Garching from 8th to 12th October 2007 was organised by ESO, with support from its Scienti c and Technical Committee, to provide a forum for the astronomical community to debate the long term future of ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) and its interferometric mode (VLTI). In particular it was considered useful for future planning to evaluate how its science use may evolve over the next decade due to competition and/or synergy with new facilities such as ALMA, JWST and, hopefully, at least one next generation 30-40 m extremely large telescope whose acronym appears in the title to symbolise this wider context. These discussions were also held in the fresh light of the Science Vision recently developed within ASTRONET as the rst step towards a 20 year plan for implementing astronomical facilities-the rst such attempt within Europe. Speci c ideas and proposals for new, second generation VLT/I instruments were also solicited following a tradition set by several earlier Workshops held since the start of the VLT development. The programme consisted of invited talks and reviews and contributed talks and posters. Almost all those given are included here although, unfortunately not the several lively but constructive discussion sessions.