The LHCb experiment has found hints of what could be a new piece of the jigsaw puzzle of the missing antimatter in our universe. They have found tantalising evidence of a phenomenon dubbed charge-parity (CP) violation in particles known as baryons – a family of particles whose best-known members are the protons and neutrons that make up all the matter in the universe.
The idea that the baryons made of matter behave exactly like their antimatter counterparts is related to the idea of CP symmetry. Any violation of this symmetry would imply that the laws of physics are not the same for matter and antimatter particles.
This is important because a detailed understanding of how this symmetry is violated in nature can contribute to explaining the overwhelming excess of matter over antimatter observed in our universe, despite the fact that the Big Bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the first place.
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