Flavour Visions

Abstract

This decade will allow to improve the resolution of the short distance scales by at least an order of magnitude, extending the picture of fundamental physics down to scales $5cdot 10^{-20}$m with the help of the LHC. Further resolution down to scales as short as $10^{-21}$m should be possible with the help of high precision experiments in which flavour violating processes will play a prominent role. Will this increase in resolution allow us to see new particles (new animalcula) similarly to what Antoni van Leeuvenhoek saw by discovering bacteria in 1676? The basic question for particle physics is how these new animalcula will look like and which difficulties of the Standard Model (SM) they will help us to solve and which new puzzles and problems they will bring with them. I will describe what role flavour physics will play in these exciting times provided this new world is animalculated.