New research out of the big particle accelerator in Europe (CERN) is the first to show something called CP violation in the class of particles that include the proton and neutron - baryons. Baryons are particles that are made of combinations of 3 quarks; my students should know that protons are up-up-down and neutrons are up-down-down combinations, for example.
CP violation is a phenomenon in particle physics that gets a little technical, but basically if differences in these 'symmetries' are found between what we call normal matter and antimatter (e.g. an antiproton has all the same properties of protons, only with a negative charge instead of positive), it can be a possible explanation for why matter won out over antimatter right after the Big Bang happened.
This is also a good example of how science will never end, that there are always new things to explore and both big and small questions to try and answer by looking at Nature! Below is a representation of the Standard Model, and the particles responsible for the observable universe.
