Proton Cha-Cha...

Image Credit: Not Exactly Rocket Science

For the first time, physicists have watched a single proton flip over on its axis. Aside from being a technical triumph, the measurement may eventually help determine why the universe contains more matter than antimatter.

Cosmologists think the Big Bang should have produced the same amount of ordinary matter — the particles that make up stars, planets and people — and antimatter, which is just like matter, only with an opposite charge. But when matter and antimatter meet, they annihilate each other. That there’s enough matter left for us to exist is one of modern physics’ biggest puzzles.
One possibility is that, opposite charge aside, antimatter isn’t always truly identical to matter, and so it doesn’t meet the requirements for triggering annihilation.

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