Baryon Asymmetry

The baryon asymmetry problem in physics refers to the fact that there is an imbalance in baryonic matter and antibaryonic matter in the universe. Neither the standard model of particle physics, nor the theory of general relativity provide an obvious explanation for why this should be so; and it is a natural assumption that the universe be neutral with all conserved charges. The Big Bang should have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter, as such, there should have been total cancellation of both. In other words, protons should have cancelled with antiprotons, electrons with antielectrons (positrons), neutrons with antineutrons, and so on for all elementary particles. This would have resulted in a sea of photons in the universe with no matter. Since this is evidently not the case, after the Big Bang, some physical laws must have acted differently for matter and antimatter.

There are competing hypotheses to explain the matter-antimatter imbalance that resulted in baryogenesis, but there is as yet no one consensus theory to explain the phenomenon.