* Astronomy

Much food for thought at major physics conference

The first week of the biggest winter conference, the Rencontres de Moriond held in La Thuile in Italy closed on March 10, leaving all attendants both impressed and puzzled by all the new results presented.
The situation is the following: Theorists know that the current theoretical model, the Standard Model of particle physics, has its limits and that it is probably the most accessible part of a more complex but unknown theory. Think of it as for mathematics: arithmetic is all most of us need for every day tasks even though we know geometry, algebra and calculus are needed for more complex applications. Physicists expect to see new phenomena that are referred to as "new physics", which would tell us which one of the many new theories currently proposed is the right one. And everybody hopes the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments will soon discover something to set us in the right direction.
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