Inventory and Outlook of High Energy Physics

by Frank Wilczek. The list of well-written articles by Wilczek continues with this 2002 preprint at the physics archive.

"No Conclusion"

But all this progress should not mark an end. Rather it allows us to ask – that’s easy enough! – and (more impressive) to take meaningful, concrete stabs at answering some truly awesome questions. Do all the fundamental interactions derive from a single underlying principle? What is the quantum symmetry of space-time? To what extent are the laws of physics uniquely determined? Why is there any (baryonic) matter at all? What makes the dark matter? Why is there so little dark energy, compared to what it “should” be? Why is there so much, compared to everything else in the Universe? These are not merely popularizations or vulgarizations but genuine, if schematic, descriptions of a few of our ongoing explorations.