Astrophysical windows into fundamental physics

在过去的二十年里，我们对物理宇宙学的现象学理解取得了快速的进展，以至于六参数和谐宇宙学模型可以准确地预测数百个独立的观测数据点（从光波长到无线电波长），通常具有100级的精度。尽管如此，宇宙学标准理论模型的大部分成分仍然是外来的：我们宇宙的能量收支似乎由量子真空主导，但神秘的是，它比粒子物理模型的自然预期轻了大约60个数量级。星系尺度上的引力似乎由暗物质主导，但自发现以来的半个多世纪里，它一直逃避任何直接或间接的非引力探测。甚至宇宙中的大多数重子物质对我们来说仍然是不可见的。

The last two decades have witnessed rapid progress in our phenomenological understanding of physical cosmology, to the extent that the six-parameter concordance cosmological model can accurately predict hundreds of independent observational data points (from optical to radio wavelengths), often with percent-level precisions. Nevertheless, most ingredients of the standard theoretical model of cosmology remain exotic: The energy budget of our cosmos appears to be dominated by the quantum vacuum, but mysteriously, it is lighter than the natural expectation from particle physics models, by some sixty orders of magnitude. The gravity on galactic scales appears to be dominated by dark matter, but it has evaded any direct or indirect non-gravitational detection for more than half a century since its discovery. Even most of the baryonic matter in the Universe remains invisible to us.