Matter's Victory Over Antimatter Leaves Puzzling result

The statement that just a smidge more matter than antimatter was created during eight years of atom-smashing by a particle accelerator in Illinois is an encouraging step for scientists trying to figure out the universe around us. But researchers still have a tough job ahead to determine if what they saw is enough to explain the cold, hard fact that today's world actually exists.

The balance between certain matter and antimatter particles tipped toward ordinary matter by just 1 percent during the particle-smashing run at the 4-mile Tevatron collider at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Ill. It's highly unlikely that the 1 percent came about due to opening, according to statistical analysis, researchers said. "We know that what we calculated is more than what was previously known," said Stefan Soldner-Rembold, a physicist at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. "Whether this is now enough to explain cosmological models, well, that's something theorists have to calculate."

Physicists have long suspected that something tilted the balance in favor of matter over antimatter, despite the original world starting with equal amounts of both in theory. Yet the Standard Model of particle physics barely allows for any matter-antimatter asymmetry or imbalance — certainly not enough to give rise to today's world.