Antimatter: Why Didn't the Universe Erase Us?

Matter and antimatter can annihilate each other. So why was there enough matter left to build stars, planets—and you? Join Mira and Verba Machina for an animated journey through the early universe's matter–antimatter mystery: antiparticles, a tiny surplus, Sakharov's conditions, CP violation and the neutrino possibility known as leptogenesis. Antimatter is real, and some differences in particle behavior have been measured. But the origin of the cosmic matter surplus remains unresolved. The 2025 LHCb baryon result is an important experimental clue, not a complete explanation of why we exist. Leptogenesis is presented as a theoretical possibility. Illustrations and particle counts are schematic, not actual observations or a literal census of the universe. CHAPTERS 0:00 Cold Open 0:43 The Other Half 1:41 The Tiny Surplus 3:46 Could It Be Hiding? 4:44 A Recipe for an Imbalance 6:36 A Crack in the Symmetry 8:22 The Neutrino Possibility 9:28 Testing the Missing Chapter 10:32 The Atom That Remained RESEARCH & SOURCES CERN — Antimatter https://home.cern/science/physics/ant... Particle Data Group — Big-Bang Cosmology (2025) https://pdg.lbl.gov/2025/reviews/rpp2... Cohen, De Rujula & Glashow — A Matter-Antimatter Universe? https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9707087 Sakharov — Conditions for baryon asymmetry (1967) https://cds.cern.ch/record/721864 Christenson et al. — Neutral-kaon CP violation (1964) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.1... LHCb — CP symmetry breaking in baryon decays (2025) https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.16954 Buchmuller, Di Bari & Plumacher — Leptogenesis for Pedestrians https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0401240 Davidson, Nardi & Nir — Leptogenesis https://arxiv.org/abs/0802.2962 ALPHA — Gravity acting on antihydrogen (2023) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06... Dupourque, Tibaldo & von Ballmoos — Antistar constraints https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.10073 CREDITS Research, script, animation and original sound design: Verba Machina. AI-generated voices: ElevenLabs. Narrator: George. Mira: Jessica. Original synthesized background music and sound effects: Verba Machina. Typeface: Nunito (SIL Open Font License). #Antimatter #EarlyUniverse #Cosmology