#antimatter

#antimatter

According to physicists' best current theories, matter and its counterpart, antimatter, ought to have been created in equal amounts at the time of the Big Bang. But antimatter is vanishingly rare in the universe, raising questions about their behaviors that could explain this discrepancy.

Matter and antimatter mirror each other in all respects but electric charge; physicists are excited by small differences in their behaviors. Recently, observations at the world's largest particle collider revealed a new class of antimatter particles breaking down differently than matter counterparts. This discovery contributes to the quest to understand why our universe consists of matter as opposed to an equal balance with antimatter, a situation suggested by early universe theories.