Notes from Socorro meeting on September 5 ATTENDING (assume NRAO unless indicated otherwise): Greg Taylor Joan Wrobel Phil Kronberg (LANL) James Anderson (NMT/NRAO) Jeff Kern (NMT/NRAO) Peggy Perley Vivek Dhawan Jean Eilek (NMT) Peter Hofner (NMT) Pat Palmer (Chicago) Mark Mckinnon Jim Ulvestad Craig Walker George Moellenbrock Frazer Owen Leonia Kogan Ylva Pihlstroem Bob Zavala (NMSU/NRAO) Shami Chatterjee Mark Claussen Walter Brisken Jon Romney Dave Finley Miller Goss Amy Mioduszewski Lorant Sjouwerman Steve Myers Peter Napier Steve Durand Alan Bridle (by video from CV) Dick Thompson (by video from CV) There might have been a few others that wandered in and out while we were taking notes. PREAMBLE About 30 colleagues participated. A few handouts were available for orientation. Greg began with a brief presentation describing the workings of the committee to date, then delved into a presentation of current VLBI capabilities. Essentially all of the discussion among participants took place, spontaneously, during that presentation. Three themes were revisited quite frequently, each of which meshes well with our three charges. So rather than list what was said when, we try to summarize the discussion under these themes. By far the most amount of time was spent talking about science drivers. SCIENCE Identify a few key problems which will have wide astronomical appeal and will be solved *only* if the cited technical advances are realized. Some examples: image near a black hole, image jet collimation regions, resolve collimated jets transversely. Pay attention to the Quarks2Cosmos questions but pose other fundamental questions as well. Ensure science drives the technical and social issues (not the reverse). Don't hesitate to acknowledge that serendipitous scientific discoveries will also follow from technical enhancements. Some specific suggestions: (1) If we can reach brightness temperatures of a few times 10^4 K then we could try and image superstar clusters in nearby interacting galaxies. This could answer questions about the distribution of the stars and how they are forming in these interesting regions. (2) Responses to challenges about what we can learn from masers noted that, in addition to kinematics, we can find out about shocked regions in the ISM, including densities, pressures, and magnetic field strengths. (3) We should be more bold in the application of VLBI studies. For example, can VLBI studies of star formation in nearby systems be used to understand cosmological issues like the formation of the first stars? Can we use VLBI to answer questions about how mass transfers cascade down to small scales? (4) Astrometry is a strength of VLBI, but will be challenged in the future by SIM and other missions. We might want to focus on the competition and where we can win (obscured regions, pulsars, giant stars resolved out by SIM, distances to SN). (5) Imaging SN explosions in detail. There are changes seen in the expanding shell of SN1993J. If these are real then their rapid changes require some fairly interesting physics. This might lead to insights in particle acceleration, shock physics, and instabilities. More examples are needed to challenge the modelers, though. (6) Parallaxes to pulsars out to 10 kpc could be very interesting to tell us about the ISM. A paragraph or two was requested that describes this and other science gains if 10 kpc can be reached. While more sensitivity would help, these discussions revealed that there was a lot that could be done with existing arrays but hasn't. The manpower to exploit the full capabilities of VLBI just isn't there. This indicates that it is essential to address some of the sociological issues that face VLBI. Simply building better and more sensitive instruments is not going to improve the popularity and general health of the field. TECHNICAL Enhance sensitivity and resolution. Enhance data analysis software, both regarding ease of use and image fidelity issues. For example, daily movies of SS433 should be easy to produce and free of artifacts. Offer web downloads of archived images and movies, for those who have scientific interest but don't have time to learn to run CALIB and IMAGR. SOCIAL Reconnect the disconnect between VLBI pundits and the rest of the astronomical community. Use topical meetings as a forum to publicize VLBI results, especially those that uniquely address the key science issues discussed at those meetings. Encourage and *enable* theorist and student involvement in VLBI research through visits to pundit centers and/or research funds dispersed to US universities. Start an awards program like the GBT program, but require that awardees attend a student symposium in Socorro for ~1 week. Consider sending NRAO/Haystack staff scientists for extended visits to other institutes, especially ones strong on theory. Be sure to send radio astronomers to non-radio meetings, and to promote the strengths and relevance of VLBI research in "big picture" type meetings and planning meetings for major new instruments. We discussed the (hypothetical) question of what should be done if NRAO suddenly has a million dollars to spend on VLBI. Here is our impression of the concensus opinion in ranked order: (1) invest in students (not just at NRAO but also at their home institutes). (2) sponser theorists as postdocs, visitors, or through awards. (3) improve hardware (get better sensitivity via Mark 5, etc.) (4) improve software (details unclear). Respectfully submitted by Joan Wrobel & Greg Taylor --- end of minutes