Organizers: Neil Turok, Perimeter Institute and Paul Steinhardt, Princeton University

The workshop is inspired by recent data from Cosmic Microwave Background measurements, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and Dark Matter experiments that show the universe to be surprisingly simple on both the microphysical and macrophysical scale:  there is a striking absence -- thus far --  of  new particles, WIMP dark matter  or non-gaussianity.  The recent report by BICEP2 of the detection of primordial gravitational waves produces some tension with current results from the Planck and WMAP satellites that may indicate unexpected complexity.  However, this workshop will occur at a time when the results have yet to be confirmed, so we are free to imagine various scenarios.   At the same time, there is the intriguing fact (clue?) that the measured Higgs and top quark mass lie within the narrow range corresponding to a metastable Higgs vacuum in the standard model.  What could all this mean?  What ideas need to be jettisoned, revised or created to naturally explain this simplicity?    

This will be a small meeting in which speakers are invited to present ideas and to brainstorm with the rest of the participants to make this a creative experience.   The style of the meeting will be small and informal with ample time for discussion.