: a rising star on the stage of flavour physics

Motivated by the new experimental information reported by the BNL-E787 Collaboration, we analyse the present impact and the future prospects opened by the measurement of . Although still affected by a large error, the BNL-E787 result favours values of substantially larger than what expected within the Standard Model. As a result, this data already provide non-trivial constraints on the unitarity triangle, when interpreted within the Standard Model framework. We stress the importance of the clean relation between , sin2β and ΔM_Bd/ΔM_Bs that in the next few years could provide one of the deepest probes of the Standard Model in the sector of quark-flavour dynamics. A speculative discussion about possible non-standard interpretations of a large is also presented. Two main scenarios naturally emerge: those with direct new-physics contributions to the amplitude and those with direct new-physics effects only in B_d– mixing. Realistic models originating these two scenarios and possible future strategies to clearly identify them are briefly discussed.