Why Are We Made of Matter?

Posted by timothy on Sunday April 6, 2014 @05:41AM from the better-than-the-alternate dept.

StartsWithABang (3485481) writes "The Universe began with equal amounts of matter and antimatter after the Big Bang, and yet when we look out at today's Universe, we find that, even on the largest scales, it's made of at least 99.999%+ matter and not antimatter. The problem of how we went from a matter-antimatter-symmetric Universe to the matter-dominated one we have today is known as baryogenesis, and is one of the greatest unsolved problems in physics. Where are we on the quest to understand it as of April, 2014? A wonderful and comprehensive recap is here."

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Re:Something From Nothing. by bunratty · 2014-04-06 06:03 · Score: 5, Informative

Actually, the big bang theory simply says that the universe started in a hot, dense state and expanded into a cold, sparse state. It doesn't even try to explain how the universe came to be in that hot, dense state. It is similar to how evolution does not even try to explain how life started, just how species evolve once they exist.

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What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.