Introduction

Particle physics and astrophysics have much in common. Both fields build beautiful instruments to unveil hidden mysteries of space. Not only do they utilize the cutting edge (and often similar) technology to achieve best possible performance, but they also look gorgeous—shiny metal shells protecting the most precise detectors human kind ever built. We both launch big things—the astrophysicists launch things up, in the outer space; particle physicists launch things down—into enormous underground caverns where the most powerful particle accelerators collide particles to converge energy into mass and perhaps recreate the early moments of the universe. Figure 1 shows two of these spectacular launches: that of the Hubble Space Telescope and the largest part of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The more we learn about the puzzles of the world around us, the more we find an astonishing connection between phenomena happening at the largest distance scales and physics revealed at the tiniest distances we have been able to probe.