A neglected particle from the dawn of time could explain why everything in the universe exists
One of the biggest mysteries in physics is why anything exists at all. Scientists believe the early universe produced matter and antimatter in nearly equal amounts. When these two meet, they destroy each other, releasing energy.
Yet something survived. That tiny excess of matter eventually formed every star, planet, galaxy, and living organism we see today.
Now, physicists from the University of Southampton and IIT Kanpur have proposed that a long-overlooked particle could help explain this imbalance.
The particle is called a right-handed neutrino. Unlike ordinary neutrinos, which barely interact with matter, this hypothetical version could be extraordinarily massive.
In their calculations, one such particle was roughly 100 trillion times heavier than a proton. Shortly after the Big Bang, it could have temporarily dominated the universe’s total energy, changing how quickly space expanded.
That faster expansion would have delayed certain particle interactions, creating conditions that allowed another heavy neutrino to generate the small excess of matter needed for our universe to exist.
The researchers suggest that this brief period could have left traces in primordial gravitational waves. Future observatories, including LISA and the Square Kilometre Array, may help test the idea.
The particle has never been directly detected, so this remains a theoretical explanation rather than a confirmed discovery.
But the possibility is remarkable. The existence of everything around us may depend on processes involving particles that disappeared billions of years before the first stars formed.
Source: Physical Review Letters; Live Science; University of Southampton.
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