Scientific Rationale

The millimeter (mm) and submillimeter (submm) wavebands from 30 to 950 GHz - from 10 mm to 300 μm - are unique in astronomy in containing more than 1000 spectral lines of interstellar and circumstellar molecules as well as the thermal continuum spectrum of cold dust at temperatures of 3-100 K. They are the only bands in the electromagnetic spectrum which allow to study cold gas and dust in space.

Such very cold material is associated with objects in formation, that is, the mysterious earliest evolutionary stages of galaxies, stars and planets. Actually most of the visible matter observed has once been in such a very cold state. These formation processes are deeply hidden within dust clouds, where the optical extinction can be many tens of magnitudes, while the extinction at mm/submm wavelengths is negligible. So understanding the origin of galaxies, stars and planets requires observations to be conducted at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths.

Given these important scientific prospects and being at the beginning of the mm/submm era with the advent of the new instrument facility in these wavebands, the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), a thorough Saas-Fee Course in 2008 on "MILLIMETER ASTRONOMY" appears timely and is of great interest.

ALMA will be the mm/submm counterpart of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), with similar angular resolution and sensitivity, but unhindered by dust opacity. It will undoubtedly produce a major step in astrophysics comparable to that provided by the HST. It is the largest ground-based astronomy project with the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), and, together with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), one of the major new facility coming into operation at the end of this decade.