Theme

The title of Indaba3 is clearly the work of a committee, announcing a workshop devoted to all aspects of symmetry, from the fundamental to the practical. In the sense that space-time is either symmetrical or not symmetrical, one word, "chirality", could have said it all. The full title emphasizes the variety of aspects that impinge on the central theme and is intended to stimulate discussion from all, even unexpected angles.

In current science, symmetry is widely considered to be one of the most fundamental concepts, either by reference to the structure of space-time or alternatively, the laws of physics. In an achiral world the laws of physics are time-reversible and in a chiral world they are not. These considerations pose a number of important questions, starting from, how chiral is the world? What are the implications of chiral space? Why does only one law of nature appear to be temporally irreversible? What causes the spontaneous lowering of symmetry? Why are some crystals chiral and others are not? Is mathematically exact symmetry possible in the real world? What is the role of the environment?

An entire workshop can be structured around any of these questions even without consideration of experimental details from spectroscopy, diffraction, optical activity, reaction kinetics and many more. These effects are subtle and their interpretation is not always unambiguous. Indaba3 therefore has the potential of an extremely exciting meeting of minds. We aim to identify suitable speakers to introduce all aspects of symmetry and structure for discussion. A special effort will be made to avoid extensive overlap and to define a logically structured programme. Invited speakers are requested to present a full draft of their presentations well in advance of the meeting to be distributed to participants as a workbook, together with extended abstracts of contributed papers.

The essence of the workshop is its interdisciplinary nature. It is an exciting prospect to dilute the fixed ideas that some crystallographers may have about symmetry in terms of discrete elements, with the concepts of continuous symmetry groups; to challenge the fundamental understanding of optical activity with the chemical facts related to molecular geometries; find the common ground shared by (nearly) symmetrical entities among elementary particles, molecules, organisms, engineering structures and the universe; and to meet people with a different view of things.

Selected papers will be published, either as a special issue of a leading international journal or an independent book.