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ASTROPHYSICAL EVIDENCE ON PHYSICS BEYOND THE STANDARD MODEL

Astrophysics and cosmology can be used to test the standard model of particle physics under conditions and over distance and time scales not accessible to laboratory experiments. Most of the astrophysical observations are in good agreement with the standard model. In particular, primordial nucleosynthesis, supernova explosions, stellar evolution and cosmic background radiations have been used to derive strong limits on physics beyond the standard model. However, the solution of some important astrophysical and cosmological problems may require new physics beyond the standard model. These include the origin of the initial conditions, large scale structure formation, the baryon asymmetry in the observed Universe, the dark matter problem, the solar neutrino problem and some cosmic ray puzzles. Here I review some important developments relevant to some of these problems, which took place most recently.