Simons Center for Geometry and Physics Public Lecture

In the past few decades we have learned a great deal about the basic laws of Physics in the infinitely small – and the infinitely large – and how the two are intimately connected. New windows have expanded our understanding, and many unexpected questions have emerged. This is an exhilarating time in history. New tools, both theoretical and observational, may lead in the next decade to major advances in our understanding of the universe. As in the past, when major discoveries are made about the fundamental laws of Nature, not only is our view of the world enriched, but also our life is transformed.

A good place to explore the discoveries from the past decades is in the description of symmetry, symmetry breaking and the Higgs boson in High Energy Physics: why, how and where to…. in a nutshell. These talks will present what we know and what we seek in the fundamental laws of Nature; how we go about answering basic questions in high energy experiments, how much we have learned, and how the technical developments needed to make discoveries have changed society. They will also delineate the boundaries of our knowledge and the known unknowns in fundamental high energy physics and cosmology.