Aspen Center for Physics Project Summary DE-SC0007313 Budget Period: 1/1/2012 to 12/31/2012 The Hunt for New Particles, from the Alps to the Plains to the Rockies The 2012 Aspen Winter Conference on Particle Physics was held at the Aspen Center for Physics from February 11 to February 17, 2012. Sixty-seven participants from nine countries, and several universities and national labs attended the workshop titled, The Hunt for New Particles, from the Alps to the Plains to the Rockies. There were 53 formal talks, and a considerable number of informal discussions held during the week. The weeks events included a public lecture-Hunting the Dark Universe given by Neal Weiner from New York University) and attended by 237 members of the public, and a physics cafe geared for high schoolers that is a discussion with physicists conducted by Spencer Chang (University of Oregon), Matthew Reece (Harvard University) and Julia Shelton (Yale University) and attended by 67 locals and visitors. While there were no published proceedings, some of the talks are posted online and can be Googled. The workshop was organized by John Campbell (Fermilab), Patrick Fox (Fermilab), Ivan Furic (University of Florida), Eva Halkiadakis (Rutgers University) and Daniel Whiteson (University of Californiamore » Irvine). Additional information is available at http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=143360. Inflationary Theory and its Confrontation with Data in the Planck Era The 2012 Aspen Winter Conference on Astroparticle physics held at the Aspen Center for Physics was Inflationary Theory and its Confrontation with Data in the Planck Era.AÂ It was held from January 30 to February 4, 2012. The 62 participants came from 7 countries and attended 43 talks over five days. Late mornings through the afternoon are reserved for informal discussions. In feedback received from participants, it is often these unplanned chats that produce the most excitement due to working through problems with fellow physicists from other institutions and countries or due to incipient collaborations. In addition, Shamit Kachru of Stanford University gave a public lecture titled The Small (and Large) Scale Structure of Space-Time.There were 237 members of the general public in attendance. Before the lecture, 65 people attended the physics cafe to discuss the current topic with Matthew Kleban (New York University) and Chao-Lin Kuo (Stanford University). This workshop was organized by Olivier Dore (Jet Propulsion Lab), Fabian Schmidt (Caltech), Leonardo Senatore (Stanford University), and Kendrick Smith (Princeton University).« less