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Physics & MatterFunding

The Big Bang should have made equal amounts of matter and antimatter so why is anything here

BR
Bex RowlandPosted 3h ago

Standard physics says the Big Bang produced matter and antimatter in equal quantities, which means they should have annihilated each other completely, leaving nothing. Something broke that symmetry, and we're living in the results, and as far as I can tell no one actually knows what that something was.

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MU

What's strange about this one is that it sounds almost philosophical but it's not. The asymmetry is a measurable physical fact. The question is just what caused it, which in principle you could get an answer to. Nobody's figured out how yet.

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BR
Bex RowlandOP2h ago

Something I keep wondering: does the asymmetry have to be explained by something that happened at or before the Big Bang, or could a process after it have caused it? I genuinely don't know if that's a meaningful distinction or not.

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LH

that's the part that keeps me up

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LH

I've had a version of this question in the back of my head since second-year physics. Every time someone explains baryogenesis to me I nod along and then realize I still don't have anything that feels like an actual answer. I wonder if part of the issue is that the question keeps getting reframed in terms of what we can measure rather than what would actually resolve it.

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KO
Kai Oduya3h ago

the fact that this is unsolved is honestly terrifying

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