| Description: | Following the SKA1 rebaselining exercise completed earlier this year, the time has come to focus on the science to be done with SKA1. Plans are that many large-scale key-science projects will be undertaken with SKA1, covering a very very wide range of topics. To start discussions on these projects, a SKA Key Science meeting was organised in Stockholm, attended by about 100 scientists from all over the world. The meeting made clear that the interest in the community for participating in such key science projects is overwhelming and that there are so many good ideas that it would take more than 10 SKA1s to satisfy everybody. Hence, a crucial topic on the agenda was commensality, i.e. how can we use the telescope such that one observation serves several, possibly very different, science purposes. If the community plays this well, the output of the telescope will be increased by a large factor. Discussions clearly are still in an early phase, but considerable progress was made and a clear route on how to proceed emerged.
Highlight of the meeting was the warm invitation by the City of Stockholm to visit and have dinner at the famous City Hall of Stockholm. This was very much appreciated by all participants. Not only because the City Hall is a very interesting building at a very nice location, but also because it is the venue where, on December 10 every year, Nobel laureates are received by the Royal family, followed by the Nobel Banquet in the famous Blue Hall and the ensuing Nobel Ball in the beautiful Golden Hall. Most attendants appreciated very much to be able to see these places because this is as close as they will ever get to a Nobel Prize. But the suspicion is that a few of the participants were less modest and made mental notes for 'next time'. |
