Goals and Format – Meetings@PSI

Goals

This Workshop will synthesize our current understanding of the surface, exospheric, and space environment of Mercury in order to provide appropriate boundary conditions and constraints that will enable improved theoretical and experimental studies into the underlying processes that generate the observed properties at Mercury. These fundamental studies feed into models that are used to describe and predict the observed properties of Mercury and its environment.

This Workshop will produce four publications, one focused on each of the questions identified in the Workshop’s Scope, to inform our community and direct the future of theoretical and experimental studies in laboratory astrophysics, thereby enabling a better understanding of Mercury.

Format

Each day of the Workshop will focus on one of the questions/areas defined in the Workshop’s Scope, over a three-hour period (4:00 – 7:00 Los Angeles, USA; 7:00 – 10:00 New York, USA; 13:00 – 16:00 Berlin, Germany; 21:00 – 24:00 Tokyo, Japan).

Each day will be led by the session moderators (to be identified in the program) who will also be the lead authors of the synthesis publication. All participants have the opportunity to be co-authors.

The Workshop will begin each theme with an invited review pertaining to the day’s topic, followed by a moderated discussion for the remaining time.

Contributions to the discussion are welcome and can be made in the following ways:

Submission of a short description, with an accompanying graphic or video, prior to the Workshop is encouraged.
Contributors will have 3 – 5 minutes to present their material and promote their ideas.
Time permitting, options to submit a real-time graphic or video will be provided.

Early submission of discussion materials is encouraged to provide the session moderators an opportunity to organize the flow of the discussion. A preliminary discussion outline, based on the submissions, will be provided in the Program three weeks prior to the Workshop.

A draft publication outline with writing assignments will be disseminated within a month of the Workshop. Further details will be discussed during the Workshop.