Blois V: Summary Talk

Abstract

Although we have a theory of strong interactions, its implications for the physics of average hadron collisions, which is the focus of this series of conferences, are far from obvious. QCD has nevertheless been a very powerful guide and I will argue that a consensus description of ``soft" hadronic physics is emerging at least at the phenomenological level, even though the message is hidden by a myriad of competing models such as the Lipatov Pomeron, the jet model, dual topological unitarization, etc. Understanding this physics is a high priority not only because it is intrinsically interesting (e.g.\ the search for chiral condensates or for point-like structure of the Pomeron), but because it dictates the structure of the backgrounds and underlying events in any hadron collider experiment. In the not so distant future most of particle physics will rely on such machines and I will therefore emphasize issues associated with the physics exploitation of future colliders (e.g.\ rapidity gaps). This is also the first Blois meeting after HERA and the experiments have already contributed significant novel information on the physics discussed at this meeting.