chapter
why any thing survived.
Matter and antimatter should have cancelled to light. Here you are anyway.
At the beginning, the universe held equal measures of matter and antimatter. The equations require it. When particle meets antiparticle, both vanish. Pure energy, and nothing else.
Nearly every pair found its counterpart and disappeared. The cosmos rang with light from ten billion annihilations. That light is still here, stretched thin by expansion, humming as static on an untuned television.
But one in every billion particles of matter had no antimatter partner. They remained when everything else became radiance.
Every atom in your body, every star, every grain of dust on every world is built from that surplus. You are the residue of an almost-perfect cancellation.
The known asymmetries in physics account for only a fraction of this surplus. The equations still fracture somewhere in the early universe. Something shifted the balance, and no one has identified what.
This is why anything survived. The question has no answer yet. The universe should be empty and humming with light. It is neither.
The universe should contain nothing but light. It contains you instead.
We are the evidence that some rule was bent or broken at the beginning. The math is incomplete, or the universe operates on a principle no one has named. Every atom is a protest against perfect cancellation. The question remains open.