The conference will be an occasion to celebrate the 95th anniversary of Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich, the outstanding soviet scientist, who was born in Minsk, Belarus. Many lectors at the conference will be the members of the world-famous scientific school in astrophysics and cosmology, founded by Ya. B. Zeldovich, who now became leading scientists in these fields in may countries including Germany, Italy, USA and Russia.

The conference will last for three days, each day focusing on a separate topic. Each day a set of morning plenary talks will be followed by the afternoon workshop and evening public lecture. The first day will be devoted to cosmology and entitled “Large Scale Structure of the Universe and Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation”. The second day, entitled “General Relativity, Gamma Ray Bursts, Neutron Star and Supernovae” will cover various topics in relativistic astrophysics. The third day, entitled “Gamma Ray Bursts, Comets, Meteorites and Species Extinction” will encompass three plenary talks reviewing the consequences of our present day understanding of the Universe and the place of our planet, life and the humankind in it.

ICRANet is the sponsoring Organisational Associate of the International Year of Astronomy. The conference therefore will be held under the aegis of UNESCO and ICRANet and aimed to celebrate the Year of Astronomy in 2009, initiated by the International Astronomical Union and UNESCO.

The conference will be based at the Belarusian State University (BSU) and is planned as realization of the joint activity, following the agreement of co-operation, recently signed by the Director of ICRANet and the Rector of BSU. The conference in Belarus is one of the series of conferences, planned by ICRANet, to be held in 2009 in New Zealand, Belarus, Brazil, France, China and Italy, aimed in celebrating the Year of Astronomy worldwide.

The total number of participants of the conference is expected to be at the range of 100 people. The number of attendants of the evening public lectures is estimated to be around 200. A limited number of scholarships will be available to cover travel and logging expenses for Belarusian high school/university students coming from outside Minsk.