Why the Universe Prefers Matter Over Antimatter

 


When the universe was born in the Big Bang, it should have created matter and antimatter in equal amounts. But look around — the stars, planets, you, and me are all made of matter. So… where did all the antimatter go?

This puzzle is called baryon asymmetry, and it’s one of the biggest mysteries in physics. According to our best theories, each matter particle has an antimatter twin: the electron has the positron, the proton has the antiproton, and so on. When matter and antimatter meet, they annihilate into pure energy.

If they were created equally, they should have destroyed each other completely, leaving behind only light. But clearly, that didn’t happen.

One possible explanation is CP violation — a tiny imbalance in the laws of physics that makes matter behave just a bit differently than antimatter. This idea was first seen in experiments with kaons in 1964 and has been studied ever since. The conditions that could explain this, called the Sakharov conditions, involve interactions that violate certain symmetries and happen out of thermal balance in the early universe.

Experiments at facilities like CERN are hunting for answers, measuring the behavior of antimatter with extreme precision. If we can solve this mystery, we’ll know why the universe exists at all — because without that small preference for matter, there would be no galaxies, no planets, and no life.

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