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FEATURES in the past. This effect is ascribed to dark energy which acceleratt;s About the author the expansion. Erik H0g, Copenhagen University Observatory, has been involved Dark matter and dark energy are just convenient names used in the European efforts in space astrometrysince the earliest stud by astronomers when speaking ofthe large velocities seen in the ies in the 1970s. In 1999 he received "The Director ofScience motion ofvisible matter in the universe. It is the great challenge for Medal,for outstanding contribution to the science programme" ofthe present astronomy and physics to understand the true physical European Space Agency nature ofdark matter and dark energy. Finally some conclusions. The entire universe has probably a Bibliography finite volume, being slightly curved through the presence ofvisible Dreyer, J.L.E. 1953, A History ofAstronomyfrom Thales to Kepler, Dover and dark matter, and ofdark energy. The universe will probably Publications, Inc. expand forever and will do so faster and faster because ofthe pres Pedersen, Olaf 1992, The Book ofNature, Vatican Observatory Publications ence ofdark energy. Pedersen, Olaf 1993, Early Physics and Astronomy, A Historical Introduc tion, Cambridge University Press Acknowledgements The author is very grateful to Ulrich Bastian, Leif Hansen, Aase Stephenson, Bruce 1994, The Music ofthe Heavens, Kepler's Harmonic H0g, Bo Jacoby, Igor Novikov, and Kristian Pedersen for discus Astronomy, Princeton University Press sions and many useful comments on style and content ofprevious Van Helden, Albert 1985, Measuring the Universe, Cosmic Dimensions versions ofthis article. from Aristarchus to Halley, The University ofChicago Press WMAP 2003, Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov contribution to the validation ofthe EWT has been invaluable. Particle physics from the However, besides celebrating this great success, it is worth consid ering the few areas of obscurity left and discussing how one can hope to improve the precision measurements in the future. Earth and from the sky It is amusing to remember what was expected from LEP, for instance at the time ofthe meeting held in Aachen, in the same Daniel Treille, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland place as the 2003 EPS Conference, in 1986. In nearly all domains the quality and accuracy ofthe final results of ZO and W± physics" have been much better than foreseen, in particular due to the ecent results in particle physics offer a good balance between the progress made during the last decade on detectors (microvertex Rnews "coming from the Earth", namely results from the various devices allowing a clean tag ofbeauty particles, byrevealing their colliders, and news "coming from the sky", concerning solar and long lifetime (flight path) ofabout 1 picosecond (few mm), lumi atmospheric neutrinos, astroparticle programmes, searches for dark nometers providing a very accurate absolute normalization ofthe matter, cosmic microwave background (CMB), cosmology, etc. various processes, etc), on methods (such as howto determine the In the light ofthis information, gathered in particular from the number ofneutrinos from the ZO properties, ...) and on the mas 2003 Summer Conferences (EPS inAachen, Lepton-Photon in Fer tering oftheoretical calculations. milab), an account ofthe status ofour field is given. Itwill appear Figure 1 and its legend recall what is the scenery ofe+e' colli in two parts, corresponding approximatively to the division sions. Sitting on the huge ZO resonance, LEP recorded about 18 between the Earth and the sky. The first one covers the Electroweak millions ZO events and SLC about halfa million only, butwith the Theory, ideas beyond the Standard Model, Quantum Chromody strong bonus ofa large polarization ofthe incident electrons and narnics (QCD), Beauty and heavy ion physics. better conditions for beauty tagging. From this large amount of data, many observables were measured, often with an accuracy of Electroweak Theory one per mil or better. Later, LEP200 measured e+e' interactions at The Electroweak Theory (EWT), together with Quantum Chro higher center-of-mass energies, up to 206 GeV: it recorded about modynamics (QCD), modern version ofthe strong interaction, 40K W pair events and set quite strong lower mass limits on the builds the Standard Model (SM) ofParticle Physics [1]. The EWT Higgs boson and Supersymmetric Particles. is a fully computable theory. All EW measurable quantities, called Ifone summarizes the whole set ofavailable EWmeasurements "observables", as for instance the properties ofthe various ZO decay (LEPfSLC and others) byperforming a global fit [2], one finds modes, can be predicted with great accuracy and compared to that the SM accounts for the data in a satisfactorybutnevertheless measurements. Each ofthem allows in particular to determine the imperfect way: the probability ofthe fit is only4.5%. Weak Mixing Angle, i.e. the parameter of the 2><2 unitary matrix The measurement lying furthest from the average is that ofthe which transforms the two abstract neutral bosons ofthe EWT weak mixing angle by the NuTeV experiment in Ferrnilab [3], into the two neutral physical states, photon and Zoo The internal which scatters neutrinos and antineutrinos on target nuclei. consistency ofthe EWT implies that all values ofthe Weak Mixing Before invoking new physics, the possible"standard"causes ofsuch Angle obtained should coincide. In terms ofthe standard Big a disagreement were carefully investigated: unexpected features of Bang model, the breaking ofthe EW symmetry, namely the time the quark distribution inside nucleons are the mostlikely culprits. at which known elementary particles got their mass, presumably If this measurement is excluded from the fIt, the probability through the Higgs mechanism*, occured at about IQ,l1s after the becomes 27.5%, a reassuring number. Big Bang. The other noticeable disagreement concerns the two most pre The e+e' high-energy colliders LEP at CERN and SLC (SLAC cise electroweak measurements, namelythe spin asymmetryALR at Linear Collider) have delivered their quasi-fInal results. Their SLC, i.e. the relative change ofrate ofZO production in e+e' collisions Article available at http://www.europhysicsnews.org or http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/epn:2004304 80 euroDhvsics news MAy/TU~m 2004 FEATURES recent refinements ofsome theoretical estimates,there is presently a good agreement between the expectation and the 0.6% accurate .••...•.... measurement on cesium made in Boulder in 1997. The APV mea ... surement does not- weight much in the EW fit. However, a ,. LEP remarkable result for such a small sized experiment is that the z ,....•.... lower mass limit it sets on a potential Z' (600-800 GeV) is quite l ., , ... " . competitive with those ofLEP or Tevatron. However, to stay so in .... p- •••••..•.•• the face offuture LHC data, the APV measurement should reach j ,. .. - 10/00 or so. The possibility ofa programme using francium, the next alkali atom, much moresensitive but radioactive,is sometimes .•......•.......•.... mentioned. _°"11·~ ••_u .... ...l .. ---L.....-- .1 It is worth underlining here the promises ofanother set oflow ,. '0 ,.. 'D. ID . E .. 10-"1 energy measurements concerning "Electric Dipole Moments (EDM), in particular ofthe neutron. For particles to have a per A fig. l~The scenery of e+e- collisions as afunction of energy. manent EDM the forces concerned must violate the invariance LEP1 wasUsitting"on the huge l!l resonance. Beauty factories under time reversal T (and therefore under CP*), and the SM exploit the Y(4S} resonance located in the family ofY beauty expectations are out ofreach, far below existing and foreseeable antibeauty resonances near 10 GeV.The J/", is the lowest charm limits. But various scenarios beyond the SM may lead to strong quark-antiquark bound state near 3 GeV. (Fig. courtesy U.A/maldi.) enhancements.Very sophisticated methods involving ultra cold neutrons are under study and may bring an improvement oftwo when one flips the electron helicity (i.e. the component ofits spin orders of magnitude on the present neutron EDM upper limit. along the direction ofmotion), and the forward-backward asym Limits on the muon EDM, as a by-product ofthe g-2 measure metry of beauty production on the ZO at LEP, AFBb, i.e. the ment, and on the electron EDM, through measurements made on manifestation ofthe violation ofparticle-antiparticle conjugation C various atoms, in particular Hg, are likely to improve as well. Ifno (andofparityP) in e+e-~ZO~beauty-anl:1beauty, which give values positive evidence is found, these limits will in particular become a ofthe weak mixing angle differing by 2.7 standard deviation with major constraintfor Supersyrnmetry. no hint ofan explanation, neither instrumental nor theoretical. Let us finally quote a potential problem concerning the unitari An ambiguitywhich is notyet removed concerns the theoretical tyofthe Cabbibo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix7, and more interpretation of the muon g-2 measurement [4] obtained in precisely its first row. The CKM matrix gives the relationship 7 Brookhaven with an experimental accuracy of- 5 10- • The slight between the quarks seen as mass and as flavour eigenstates. Uni departure ofthe muon g factor, relating the magnetic moment to tarityjustmeans thatwhen one"rotates"from onebaseto the other the spin, from its canonical value of2 (i.e. the value given bythe the probabilityhas to be conserved. The CKM matrixis a 3X3 uni Dirac equation describing pointlike