Good news for the metropolitan area of Bremen – Oldenburg: The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) has granted the University of Bremen and the University of Oldenburg approval for a graduate school in the field of Gravitation Physics. The new school, called “Models of Gravity”, is under the leadership of Professor Claus Lämmerzahl (University of Bremen) and Jutta Kunz (University of Oldenburg). It will officially open in April 2012 and there will be places for eleven fellows, as well as two post-docs, and a total of 30 students will be able to participate in courses.
The objective pursued by the graduate school is to investigate the effects of gravitation especially with regard to developing practical applications. This will be the very first graduate school dedicated to the topic, making sure that gravitation physics becomes anchored as a research concentration in North-West Germany. Beside the University of Bremen and the University of Oldenburg, Jacobs University Bremen, and the universities of Hannover and Bielefeld are also involved, as well as the University of Copenhagen outside Germany.
“Gravitation physics is a promising area of research with great potential for practical applications. Particularly in the metropolitan area of Bremen-Oldenburg which is home to important enterprises in the aerospace industry, it is clearly of great public interest that universities become engaged in the research and teaching of gravitation physics”, says Professor Wilfried Müller, President of the University of Bremen. Professor Babette Simon, President of the University of Oldenburg adds: “The decision of the DFG to approve a graduate school at our University underpins the high reputation which has been earned in the discipline of physics in Oldenburg and Bremen“. At the same time it shows just how fruitful and rewarding cooperation between the two neighboring universities can be for all concerned.
Among other things, gravitation physics is concerned with the geometry of time and space, with black holes and wormholes, time travel and the Big Bang. A second glance reveals that gravitation physics also occupies an important role in our everyday lives. For example, in order to understand GPS (Global Positioning System) or the future Galileo System – the satellites for this system are being built in Bremen, by the way – scientists use the same formalism as used to describe black holes. Not being able to correct for special and general relativistic effects would result in errors of more than ten kilometres every day – which would be most unfortunate for planes coming in to land, for instance.