  Over the past three years we have determined the basic features of the
Universe -- spatially flat; accelerating; comprised of 1/3 a new form of
matter, 2/3 a new form of energy, with some ordinary matter and a dash of
massive neutrinos; and apparently born from a burst of rapid expansion during
which quantum noise was stretched to astrophysical size seeding cosmic
structure. The New Cosmology greatly extends the highly successful hot big-bang
model. Now we have to make sense of all this: What is the dark matter particle?
What is the nature of the dark energy? Why this mixture? How did the matter --
antimatter asymmetry arise? What is the underlying cause of inflation (if it
indeed occurred)?

Astrophysics