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Matter-Antimatter Asymmetry
Why is there more matter than anti-matter?
CuriosityQuest
September 23, 2024
In the beginning…
At the beginning of the universe, during the Big Bang, there was an equal amount of matter and antimatter. When matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate each other, releasing energy. This should have wiped out all matter, leaving behind only radiation. Yet, here we are, living in a universe made of matter, which seems to defy what physics predicts.
Total annihilation?
Everything would have been destroyed if matter and antimatter had been perfectly balanced at the start. However, a tiny fraction of matter—about one ten-billionth of the original amount—survived, and we are part of that.
The winner is…
So why did Matter win? Physicists believe something happened during the Big Bang that broke the perfect symmetry between matter and antimatter, but we don’t yet know what caused this. There are also still mysteries about antimatter itself. For instance, we don’t even know if antimatter would fall up or down due to gravity (we think it would be down)!
Yep, it is still a mystery…
Antimatter and its properties remain one of the greatest mysteries in science. While modern physics predicts much of its behavior, there are still many mysteries surrounding it.
What do you think happened that caused an imbalance in the universe?
This week’s quote:
The desire to know something of our neighbors in the immense depths of space does not spring from idle curiosity nor from thirst for knowledge, but from a deeper cause, and it is a feeling firmly rooted in the heart of every human being capable of thinking at all.
Info Source: Michio Kaku, The Future of Humanity