Why Didn't the Universe Annihilate Itself? Neutrinos May Hold the Answer

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Why didn't the universe annihilate itself? Neutrinos may hold the answer:

Alysia Marino and Eric Zimmerman, physicists at CU Boulder, have been on the hunt for neutrinos for the last two decades.

That's no easy feat: Neutrinos are among the most elusive subatomic particles known to science. They don't have a charge and are so lightweight-each one has a mass many times smaller than the electron-that they interact only on rare occasions with the world around them.

They may also hold the key to some of physics' deepest mysteries.

In a study published today in the journal Nature, Marino, Zimmerman and more than 400 other researchers on an experiment called T2K come closer to answering one of the big ones: Why didn't the universe annihilate itself in a humungous burst of energy not long after the Big Bang?

The new research suggests that the answer comes down to a subtle discrepancy in the way that neutrinos and their evil twins, the antineutrinos, behave-one of the first indications that phenomena called matter and antimatter may not be the exact mirror images many scientists believed.

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