  Noncommutative field theories are a class of theories beyond the standard
model of elementary particle physics. Their importance may be summarized in two
facts. Firstly as field theories on noncommutative spacetimes they come with
natural regularization parameters. Secondly they are related in a natural way
to theories of quantum gravity which typically give rise to noncommutative
spacetimes. Therefore noncommutative field theories can shed light on the
problem of quantizing gravity. An attractive aspect of noncommutative field
theories is that they can be formulated so as to preserve spacetime symmetries
and to avoid the introduction of irrelevant degrees freedom and so they provide
models of consistent fundamental theories. In these notes we review the
formulation of symmetry aspects of noncommutative field theories on the
simplest type of noncommutative spacetime, the Moyal plane. We discuss
violations of Lorentz, P, CP, PT and CPT symmetries as well as causality. Some
experimentally detectable signatures of these violations involving Planck scale
physics of the early universe and linear response finite temperature field
theory are also presented.
