I'm at the COMEX7 conference in Catania. COMEX = collective motion in exotic nuclei, and the conference is mainly about giant resonances. In fact the COMEX series follows an older series called "Giant Resonances" with the name change indicating a expansion of the topic to other collective motion. Having said that, I don't think something like fission (a collective motion of nucleons) would be considered on topic while, in common to all conferences, there are plenty of (perfectly good and interesting) talks which are squarely off-topic.
I travelled on Sunday, and the conference started yesterday. As always happens at conferences I get reinvigorated with the excitement of the field; hearing the new results; getting ideas for ways I can contribute. I'm here with my colleagues Abhishek and Esra, the latter of whom gave an excellent keynote talk yesterday:
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| My Surrey colleague Esra Yüksel talking at COMEX7 |
Catania is very pretty. It is full of grand buildings though is also a bit run down and chaotic like big cities can be. It feels like a big city when you are in the centre, though the official population is around 300k - so not so big, but the whole metro area is over a million.
The conference is at the University in the outskirts of the city, and we have a conference bus taking us from the city centre where most delegates are staying. I'm talking on Friday in the last session of the conference before heading off to the airport for the trip home. Here is me last night with the city cathedral in the background
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| The author, and Catania cathedral |
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