Physicist Anders Rehult has shed new light on how differences between matter and antimatter can manifest. He has demonstrated how these differences can influence experiments in particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva and has developed methods to account for these effects. This paves the way for a deeper exploration of physics beyond the Standard Model, contributing in a small way to a better understanding of the fundamental forces that govern the universe.
In the very early universe, a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, matter particles appeared for the first time. According to our current leading theory of particle physics, the Standard Model, these particles should have emerged along with an equal amount of antimatter particles. However, if that were the case, matter and antimatter would have annihilated each other or otherwise separated into distinct regions of the cosmos. Neither of these scenarios seems to have happened. Instead, something altered the balance between matter and antimatter, allowing all the structures we see in the universe today to form, from atoms and molecules to planets, stars, and living cells.
