The Marcel Grossmann Meetings have grown under the guidance of an International Organizing Committee and a large International Coordinating Committee. The first two meetings, MG1 and MG2, were held in Trieste (1975, 1979). A most memorable MG3 (1982) was held in Shanghai and represented the first truly international scientific meeting in China after the so-called Cultural Revolution. Three years later MG4 was held in Rome (1985). It was at MG4 that "astroparticle physics" was born.

MGIXMM was organized by the International Organizing Committee composed of D Blair, Y Choquet-Bruhat, D Christodoulou, T Damour, J Ehlers, F Everitt, Fang Li Zhi, S Hawking, Y Ne'eman, R Ruffini (chair), H Sato, R Sunyaev, and S Weinberg. Essential to the organization was an International Coordinating Committee of 135 members from scientific institutions of 54 countries. MGIXMM was attended by 997 scientists of 69 nationalities. It took place on 2-8 July 2000 at the University of Rome, Italy. The scientific programs included 60 plenary and review talks, as well as talks in 88 parallel sessions. The three volumes of the proceedings of MGIXMM present a rather authoritative view of relativistic astrophysics, which is becoming one of the priorities in scientific endeavour. The papers appearing in these volumes cover all aspects of gravitation, from mathematical issues to recent observations and experiments. Their intention is to give a complete picture of our current understanding of gravitational theory at the turn of the millennium.

The Marcel Grossmann Individual Awards for this meeting were presented to Cecille and Bryce DeWitt, Riccardo Giacconi and Roger Penrose, while the Institutional Award went to the Solvay Institute, accepted on behalf of the Institute by Jacques Solvay and Ilya Prigogine. The acceptance speeches are also included in the proceedings.

Full Table of Contents

Contents:

• Part A:
• Gravitational Collapse of the Wavefunction: An Experimentally Testable Proposal (R Penrose)
• Local and Global Results on the Cauchy Problem for the Einstein Equations (Y Choquet-Bruhat)
• Mathematical Challenges of General Relativity (S Klainerman)
• The Global Initial Value Problem in General Relativity (D Christodoulou)
• Quantum Gravity at the Turn of the Millennium (G T Horowitz)
• Spinors, Superalgebras and the Signature of Space-time (S Ferrara)
• Superstring Phenomenology and Large Extra Dimensions (I Antoniadis)
• Quantum Strings and Black Holes (T Damour)
• Gravitational Waves — The New Generation of Laser Interferometric Detectors (B C Barish)
• TAMA Project (K Tsubono)
• Resonant-Mass Gravitational Wave Detectors at the Beginning of the New Millennium (E Coccia)
• Implications of the R-Mode Instability of Rotating Relativistic Stars (J L Friedman & K H Lockitch)
• Chaotic Phenomena in Astrophysics and Cosmology (V G Gurzadyan)
• Astrophysical Neutrinos: 20th Century and Beyond (J N Bahcall)
• Solar and Atmospheric Neutrino Results from Super-Kamiokande (T Kajita)
• Geodetic Precession in Binary Neutron Stars (M Kramer)
• The Hot Big Bang: Physics and Cosmology (R B Partridge)
• Imaging the Early Universe and Measuring the Curvature of Space (P De Bernardis)
• Type Ia Supernovae and the Accelerating Universe (G Aldering)
• The Structure of the Universe on 100 Mpc Scales (J Einasto)
• The Discovery of Gamma Ray Burst Distance and Energy and the Role of BeppoSAX (E Costa)
• The Cosmic Gamma-Ray Bursts (S G Djorgovski et al.)
• Black Holes and Gamma Ray Bursts: Background for the Theoretical Model (R Ruffini)
• Comptonization Processes in Galactic and Extragalactic High Energy Sources (L Titarchuk)
• X-Ray Novae and the Evidence for Black Hole Event Horizons (R Narayan et al.)
• Strong Field Gravity and Quasi-Periodic Oscillations from Low Mass X-Ray Binaries (L Stella & M Vietri)
• Cosmic Journeys: To the Edge of Gravity, Space and Time (N E White)
• Inertial Forces in General Relativity (C V Vishveshwara)
• The Slow-Rotation Approximation as a Tool for Spotting and Evading Troubles with Perfect Fluid Models (Z Perjés)
• GRworkbench: A Computational System based on Differential Geometry (S M Scott et al.)
• Chaos in Non-Abelian Gauge Fields, Gravity and Cosmology (S G Matinyan)
• Spin and Rotation in General Relativity — Rapporteur's Introduction (L H Ryder & B Mashhoon)
• The Einstein Equations on the 3-Brane World: A Window to Extra Dimensions (K-I Maeda)
• Conformal Fields in Higher Dimensions (S Ferrara & C Fronsdal)
• Does Superstring Theory Have a Conformally Invariant Limit? (J H Schwarz)
• Quantum Cosmology at the Turn of Millennium (A O Barvinsky)
• Holographic Bound from Second Law (J D Bekenstein)
• The Gravitational Reaction Force on a Particle in the Schwarzschild Background (H Nakano & M Sasaki)
• Black Holes: New Horizons (S A Hayward)
• Boson and Axion Stars (E W Mielke & F E Schunck)
• Quantum Computation and Information (A Carlini)
• The Challenge of Measuring G (R D Newman)
• Measuring Gravity at Sub-Millimeter Distances (P Boynton et al.)
• The Gravitational Wave Data Analysis: A Computing Challenge (F Ricci)
• Inhomogeneous Cosmology — Workshop Report (A Krasinski)
• Brane-World Creation and Inflation (M Sasaki)
• Large Scale Matter Distribution (M Demianski & A Doroshkevich)
• Dark Matter, Microlensing and the Galactic Mass Functions (L Grenacher & Ph Jetzer)
• The Hubble Constant from Cepheid Distances Measured with the Hubble Space Telescope (J Mould)
• Galactic Dust Contamination in the Boomerang Maps (S Masi et al.)
• CMB Probe Cosmology and Dark Ages (N Sugiyama)
• The Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effect: Current Status and Future Prospects (Y Rephaeli)
• Highlights of RXTE Studies of Compact Objects after ~ 5 Years (H Bradt et al.)
• The BeppoSAX Mission (L Piro)
• Introduction to the Problems of the Session AP2: Matter, Dark Matter and CP Violation (G Salvini)
• Are Oscillations Established for Atmospheric v ? (P Lipari)
• Lingering Problems in Gamma-Ray Observations of GRB's (C Meegan)
• Notes for a Brief History of Quantum Gravity (C Rovelli)
• The Princeton Mathematics Community in the 1930s: An Oral History Project, the On-line Version (R T Jantzen)
• Part B:
• Geometrical Methods for Integrability in Classical and Relativistic Systems
• Complex and Twistor Methods in General Relativity
• Inertial Forces in General Relativity
• Exact Solutions (Mathematical Aspects)
• Exact Solutions (Physical Aspects)
• Chaos in General Relativity and Cosmology
• Einstein–Maxwell System
• The Role of Spin and Rotation in General Relativity
• Global Structure: Singularities, Cosmic Censorship, Asymptotics
• Metric-Affine Gravitational Theories in 4 Dimensions
• Kaluza–Klein Theories
• Alternative Theories
• From (Super) Gravity to Glueballs
• P-Branes, Supergravity and M-Theory
• Strings, Gravity and Unification
• String Cosmology
• Black Holes in String Theory
• Quantum Geometry (I)
• Quantum Geometry (II)
• Dynamics Without Background
• Role of Reference Frames in Quantum Gravity
• Quantum Fields
• Quantum Cosmology
• Casimir Effect
• Simplicial Quantum Gravity
• New Developments in Planck Scale Physics
• Black Hole Thermodynamics
• Hairy Black Holes
• Perturbations of Black Holes
• Generalized Horizons
• Perturbation of Collapsed Configurations
• Self-Gravitating Systems
• Part C:
• Boson and Axion Stars
• Numerical Relativity
• Black Hole Collisions
• Quantum Computation and Information
• Strong Gravity and Gravitational Waves
• Testing General Relativity with Satellite Laser Ranging
• Precision Gravity Measurements
• General Relativity in Space
• Sensitive Tests of the Equivalence Principle
• Measurements of Gravity at Sub-mm Distances
• Gravitational Wave Laser Interferometry in the USA
• Gravitational Wave Laser Interferometry in Europe
• Gravitational Wave Laser Interferometry in Austral-Asia and the Pacific
• Space Detection of Gravitational Waves (LISA)
• Resonant Detectors of Gravitational Waves: Bars and Spheres
• Gravitational Wave Data Analysis
• Topology of the Universe
• Nonsingular Cosmology
• Inhomogeneous Cosmology
• Inflation
• Non-Gaussian Models of Structure Formation
• Compact Spaces with Negative Curvature
• Cosmological Constant and Universe Acceleration
• Brane and Higher Dimensional Cosmologies
• Observational Cosmology
• Gravitational Lenses
• Microlenses
• Galaxy Formation and Evolution
• Current Observations of CMB Anisotropy
• CMB Anisotropy: Theory and Analysis Methods
• SZ Effect and CMB Analysis Methods
• Observations from the Rossi Observatory
• Observations from ASCA and ROSAT
• Observations from BeppoSAX Satellite
• Accretion Processes Around Neutron Stars and Black Holes
• Astrophysical Black Holes
• Binary Neutron Stars — Coalescing Neutron Stars
• General Relativistic Effects in Neutron Stars and Black Holes
• Radiative Transfer in General Relativity
• On r-Mode Instabilities in Neutron Stars
• Massive Neutrinos
• Matter, Dark Matter and CP Violation
• Cosmic Neutrino Oscillations
• High Energy Astronomy and Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays
• Experimental Status of Neutrino Mixing
• Gamma Ray Burst X-Ray Afterglow
• Gamma Ray Burst Optical Observations
• Gamma Ray Burst Gamma Observations
• Ongoing and Future of Gamma Ray Burst Missions
• Fireballs and Gamma Ray Bursts
• Black Holes and Gamma Ray Bursts
• Einstein Theories: Historical Perspective

"... C'est un monument de toute la Relativité à l'aube du troisième millénaire, j'y trouve une foule de richesses qui éclairent à nouveau ma vision du monde ..."

"... This is a monument to all of relativity at the dawn of the third millennium, I find in it a wealth of richness which brings new light to my vision of the world ..."

"... I have received the three volumes of the Marcel Grossmann Meeting. I am full of admiration. I think it will be a reference book for the years to come. I am impressed by the fact that some of the problems we are studying are close to the problems discussed in various articles ..."