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2005, World Year of Physics, Einstein Year

The 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's "Miraculous Year" is celebrated this year which has been named the "World Year of Physics". Events and media coverage are aimed to raise the worldwide public awareness for physics and also physical science.

Indeed, Einstein's legacy still fascinates not only physicists but also members of the public alike. In particular, the question about physics beyond Einstein's theories is grabbing the attention. For example the question as to whether the Theory of General Relativity remains the last word in our understanding of gravity or not -- a question that was also included as one of eleven questions raised in ``Connecting Quarks with the Cosmos: Eleven Science Questions for the New Century'' -- is pursued with with great efforts. The construction of gravitational wave detectors or the launch of sophisticated satellite missions like Gravity-Probe B represent only some of those.

The answer to this question about gravity is important as it will have a huge impact for our attempts to formulate a theory of quantum gravity, as flaws discovered in general relativity would change our view about gravitation dramatically.

Astronomy, and in particular radio astronomy, has played and will continue to play an important and irreplaceable role in unravelling the mysteries our Universe and the physical laws that governs it. The
three Nobel Prizes for Physics awarded to radio astronomers for the detection of the Microwave Background, the discovery of pulsars and the verification of the existence of gravitational waves are excellent examples that illustrate how radio astronomy probes fundamental physics and the prediction of seemingly untestable theories.

The Square-Kilometer Array (SKA) will continue this tradition as Key Science Projects probe the mysterious Dark Energy, study the first black holes and the pulsars discovered around stellar black holes are used to test general relativity in the ultra-strong field regime. Indeed, pulsar-black hole systems will provide unprecedented probes of relativistic gravity with a discriminating power that
surpasses all its present and foreseeable competitors. The recent discovery of the first double pulsar illustrates beautifully how present limits on the validity of general relativity can be pushed to new extremes when new exciting discoveries are made.

While these are brilliant examples how the SKA will produce breakthroughs at the forefront of scientific research, the amount of wonderful physics that we will be studying with the SKA is even much
larger. Fundamental questions about the origin and evolution of cosmic magnetism, the evolution of galaxies and large-scale structures, the birth of planets and life are only a few topics among the 50 or so
chapters that the science book includes. Almost every part of physics is represented and World Year of Physics offers a wonderful opportunity to promote this.

M.Kramer
Jodrell Bank Observatory
Chair Outreach Committee

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