We’re now a step closer to understanding how the Universe avoided an antimatter apocalypse. CERN scientists have discovered tantalizing clues of a fundamental difference in the way physics handles matter and antimatter.
Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have verified an asymmetry between matter and antimatter forms of a particle called a baryon.
Known as a charge-parity (CP) violation, the effect has only previously been detected in another class of particles, called mesons. But experimental evidence in baryons, which make up the bulk of the Universe’s matter, is something physicists have been long hunting for.