Beyond the Desert 2003

The Fourth International Conference on Particle Physics Beyond the Standard Model (BEYOND THE DESERT '03 - Accelerator, Non-accelerator and Space Approaches) was held during June 9-14, 2003 at Castle Ringberg, Tegernsee, Germany. Traditionally the Scientific Program of the BEYOND conferences, which we started in 1997, covers most of the prominent topics of modern par~ ticle physics and astrophysics (see CERN Courier November 1997, pp. 16-18, and March 2003, pp. 29-30). At this conference one of the topics on which we put major emphasis were new theoretical developments in extensions of the Stan­ dard Model by Supergravity - which had its twentieth birthday in this year -, by Superstrings and by Extra Dimensions. Two of the 'inventors' of the first superspace formulation of supergravity - Pran Nath and Richard Arnowit- were participants at this meeting. These topics were discussed by Pran Nath (Boston), Dick Arnowitt (Texas A&M) - who concentrated on the connection to dark matter and g-2 of the muon -, A. E. Faraggi (Oxford, UK), R. E. Allen (Texas A&M) and A. Kobakhidse (Helsinki Univ. ). Fundamental symmetries, including CP violation beyond the Standard Mo­ del, a possible time variation of the QCD scale, and the status of preons, were dis­ cussed by Peter Herczeg (Los Alamos), M. N. Rebelo (Lisboa, Portugal), R. Leh­ nert (Algarve Univ. , Portugal), Harald Fritzsch (Munich) and S. Fredriksson (Lulea Univ. , Sweden).