First Physics Highlights from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

Since one year experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have started exploring physics at the high energy frontier. A rich harvest of initial physics results has been obtained that allow one already to test, at highest energies ever reached in a laboratory, the Standard Model (SM) of elementary particles, and to make searches Beyond the SM (BSM). Significant results have been already obtained in searches for the Higgs Boson, which would establish the postulated electro-weak symmetry breaking mechanism in the SM, as well as for BSM physics like Supersymmetry (SUSY), extra dimensions, quark compositeness and others. The SUSY searches are particularly topical as they could reveal a candidate for the Dark Matter in the Universe. The status of these searches, and the future prospects at the LHC, will be covered in this talk.