Essay on physics and non-commutative geometry

Our aim, in this article, is to try to discover what physics would be like if the space in which it took place was not a set of points, but a non-commutative space. We shall not go very far in this direction, and the consequences of this investigation are for the moment either mathematical or only applied to a commutative space-time. It is clear, however, that a tool as remarkable as the Dixmier trace for analyzing logarithmic divergences should be useful to physicists. Moreover we have been able to show that a small modification of our picture of space-time gives a conceptual explanation of the Higgs fields and of the way they appear in the Weinberg-Salam model. This should allow us to make at the classical level explicit predictions of the Higgs mass: a very crude one is discussed. (author)