The first global meeting of the COST Action ”CA 16104 Gravitational waves, black holes and fundamental physics (GWverse)” took place in Malta, Gravity@Malta2018 (22-25 January 2018). The meeting brought together three normally disjoint communities, namely Gravitational Wave detection and analysis, BH modeling (in both astrophysical and GR contexts), and strong-gravity tests of fundamental physics.
Ema Valente successfully finished her Physics M.Sc. at Aveiro University, on December 20th 2017, by defending a thesis with title "A simple model of exotic compact objects: interaction with a scalar field". This thesis was supervised by Gr@v researcher C. Herdeiro and examined by Prof. Luis Crispino, from the U. Federal do Pará, Brazil. Well done Ema!
The fourth general assembley of the Portuguese Relativity and Gravitation Society (SPRG) ellected the following new officers: C. Herdeiro (president), J. Natário (vice-president), V. Cardoso (Treasurer), J. Lemos (General Assembley President), F. Mena (First Secretary), J. Costa (Second secretary). These officers appear in the above photograph presenting the 2017 Alberto Prize to M. Zilhão. The remaining officer is J. Rocha ("Fiscal Único").
The X Black Holes workshop took place at Aveiro University on 18-19 December 2017. It gathered almost 100 scientists discussing black holes from many different perspectives. Besides 63 oral communications, the workshop also included the fourth General Assembley of the Portuguese Relativity and Gravitation Society (SPRG) and a special session celebrating the 60th anniversary of Prof. J. S. Lemos.
The kick off meeting of the FunFiCO RISE project took place on December 20th at Aveiro University. This is a Marie Curie Research and Innovation Staff Exchange partnership between Aveiro University (coordinator), Sheffield University (UK), UFPa (Brazil), UNAM (Mexico) and Valencia University (Spain).
Miguel Zilhão, a former PhD student at Gr@v, was the winner of the 2017 Portuguese Society on Relativity and Gravitation's (SPRG) Alberto prize. The prize was awarded on December 19th 2017, during the general assembly of the SPRG.
Gr@v members P. Cunha and C. Herdeiro visited Kindai University in Osaka, Japan, hosted by Prof. Akihiro Ishibashi, within a Marie Curie RISE partnership that includes both Aveiro U. and Kindai U. (StronGrHEP project). The photo shows a delightful dinner with collegues from Osaka City University, including Hideki Hishihara, Ken-ichi Nakao and Hirotaka Yoshino.
Gr@v members P. Cunha and C. Herdeiro were amongst the participants of the 27th workshop on General Relativity and Gravitation in Japan (JGRG 27). Herdeiro was one of the invited speakers.
The mean-motion resonance is one of the most interesting phenomena in celestial mechanics. Its importance lies on the comprehension of the formation and long-term stability of planetary systems in close orbits.
Five of the ground-breaking gravitational wave detections by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration have been interpreted as black hole collisions forming a more massive black hole. It is hard to demonstrate conclusively that these objects are indeed black holes, and there is a lively debate on the intriguing possibility that other, more exotic alternatives could explain the observations. In an article published in Physical Review Letters, Gr@v members P. Cunha and C.