00:00Matter and antimatter
00:01The tiny difference that made all life possible
00:05Have you ever wondered why the universe exists?
00:08The answer seems to lie in a story of opposites
00:11A cosmic balancing act that went wrong
00:14But thankfully, in our favor
00:16Scientists have discovered that our universe exists
00:19Because it originated with a slight imbalance
00:21Between matter and antimatter
00:23What exactly are they?
00:26Matter particles, electrons, protons and neutrons
00:29Are what make us up
00:31And they differ from antimatter
00:33Which has the opposite electric charge
00:35The catch is that they don't get along
00:39When they collide, they annihilate each other
00:42In an intense burst of gamma rays
00:44The concept of antimatter isn't new
00:46It was predicted almost a century ago
00:49By the English physicist Paul Dirac
00:51Its existence was confirmed in the 1930s
00:55And today, scientists can even create it
00:58In the Large Hadron Collider
00:59The LHC
01:01This is where the great mystery comes in
01:04Dirac's predictions suggested there should be
01:07Equal amounts of matter and antimatter
01:09However, the universe we observe
01:12Is overwhelmingly dominated by matter
01:14All the stars and all the galaxies
01:17Are made of it
01:18Particle physicists believe that the universe
01:21Started with a 52-50 ratio of matter
01:24And antimatter during the Big Bang
01:26But that it was very quickly dominated by matter
01:29For this to happen, there had to be a very slight difference
01:33Or asymmetry
01:35In the behavior of matter and antimatter
01:38To allow one of them to dominate over the other
01:40But this difference is not predicted
01:43Is not understood
01:44And is certainly not explained
01:47As particle physicist Tara Shears pointed out
01:50Scientists call this the matter-antimatter asymmetry problem
01:54Imagine billions of times more matter and antimatter particles
01:58Than exist now
01:59All annihilating each other in the first fractions of a second
02:03After the Big Bang
02:05Physicists state that what we are made of
02:08Are the leftovers of that cosmic event
02:10Essentially, what predominated became what we now call matter
02:14And its opposite became antimatter
02:17A significant idea to solve this problem
02:20Came from the Soviet physicist
02:22Andrei Sakharov
02:23In 1967
02:25He proposed that the asymmetry exists
02:28Because matter and antimatter particles
02:30Are not exact opposites
02:32But rather react differently to some fundamental forces
02:36Under certain circumstances
02:38This phenomenon is known as CNCP violation
02:42While the general principles are known
02:44The specific details remain elusive
02:46Interestingly, antimatter is not just a cosmic phenomenon
02:50A NASA spacecraft has discovered bursts of antimatter
02:55Released by thunderstorms in Earth's atmosphere
02:57So, while we continue to make incredible scientific strides
03:02The fundamental question of why matter prevailed over antimatter
03:06Why Portu Existimos Como Resaltodo
03:10D.E.S.A. Pequega
03:11Differencia
03:12And why we exist as a result of that tiny difference?
03:16Remains one of the most captivating mysteries of the universe
03:20Money Explainers
