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Space
Space
Science
Robert Lea

Could our universe exist because black holes ate up all the antimatter?

A black circle in the center of the illustration surrounded by swirling glowing patterns spiraling outward from it. The left side is colored red while the right side is colored purple.

One of the most fundamental and curious mysteries in the universe is the fact that anything exists at all. That is because during the Big Bang, equal amounts of matter and antimatter particles should have been created — antimatter being like the "opposite" of regular matter, meaning it's made up of antiprotons and antielectrons. And when matter and antimatter particles meet, they are mutually annihilated.

That means in a universe split up into matter and antimatter, large structures such as galaxies, stars, planets, moons and even our bodies should struggle to exist. Thus, some early quirk of the universe must have eliminated antimatter and allowed a matter-dominated cosmos to prosper. For some time, scientists have been keenly searching for evidence of what this type of event might be.

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