Strong theoretical evidence suggests that an episode in the very early universe, perhaps during one of the force splits, endowed the universe with a remarkable asymmetry, in which particles of matter barely outnumbered particles of antimatter: by a billion-and-one to a billion. That small difference in population would hardly get noticed by anybody amid the continuous creation, annihilation, and re-creation of quarks and antiquarks, electrons and antielectrons (better known as positrons), and neutrinos and antineutrinos. The odd man out had oodles of opportunities to find somebody to
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