The 2nd Course of the International School on Astrophysical Relativity "John Archibald Wheeler" is going to be held at EMFCSC (Erice, Italy) at June 27-July 5, 2008 about "Frontiers in Numerical Gravitational Astrophysics".

Purpose of the Course

This Course has the scope to gather some of the best experts in computational simulations for the study of gravitating systems in astrophysics, to allow them to present their knowledge and expertise to deeply motivated students at the graduate level, as well as young researchers.

The main aim of the Course is that of clarifying whether and when the classic Newtonian approach fails and General Relativity is needed to approach reliably the complicated non-linear aspects of the physics involved. Consequently, the differences in the numerical and computational schemes approaches in the classic and relativistic cases will be illustrated and discussed. A small fraction of time is dedicated to the handling and visualization of the huge amount of data output.

Lectures

• stars: formation and final evolutionary phases
• compact interacting objects and gravitational waves
• stellar systems: from small to large N-body problems
• large and small scale structure in the Universe
• supercomputing methods and tools

For further information please refer to http://astro1.phys.uniroma1.it/ericeschool/index.html