Elementary Particle Physics seeks to understand both the structure and fundamental interactions of sub-nuclear matter. It is also called High Energy Physics, because many elementary particles do not occur under normal circumstances in nature, but can be created and detected during energetic collisions of other particles, as is done in particle accelerators.
Particle physicists internationally agree on the most important goals of particle physics research in the near and intermediate future. The overarching goal is to find and understand what physics may lie beyond the Standard Model. There are several powerful experimental reasons to expect New Physics, including dark matter and neutrino mass. There are also theoretical hints that this New Physics should be found at accessible energy scales. Most importantly, though, there may be unexpected and unpredicted surprises which will give us the most opportunity to learn about nature.
Efforts to find this new physics are focused on new collider experiments. A (relatively) near term goal is the completion of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2008 which will continue the search for the Higgs boson, supersymmetric particles, and other New Physics.
Additionally, there are important non-collider experiments which also attempt to find and understand physics beyond the Standard Model. One important non-collider effort is the determination of the neutrino masses since these masses may arise from neutrinos mixing with very heavy particles. In addition, cosmological observations provide many useful constraints on the dark matter, although it may be impossible to determine the exact nature of the dark matter without the colliders.
