What problems of physics and astrophysics seem now to be especially important and interesting (thirty years later, already on the verge of XXI century)?

The rate of development of science nowadays is striking. Great changes in physics, astronomy, biology, and many other fields of science have come about within a period of not more than one to two generations. Readers may see it even in the example of their own families. My father, for instance, was born in 1863 and was a younger contemporary of Maxwell (1831–1879). I myself was already 16 when the neutron and positron were discovered in 1932. Before that only the electron, proton, and photon were known. It is somehow not easy to realize that the electron, X-rays, and radioactivity were discovered only about a hundred years ago, and quantum theory was born in 1900. At the same time, one hundred years is such a short period, not only compared with the approximately 3 billion years since life appeared on the Earth, but also compared with the age of modern man (Homo sapiens), which amounts to nearly 50 thousand years! It is also useful to remember that the first great physicists — Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) and Archimedes (about 287–212 B.C.) are separated from us by more than two thousand years.