{"id":812076,"date":"2026-10-24T04:32:23","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T04:32:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/812076\/"},"modified":"2026-10-24T04:32:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T04:32:23","slug":"forgotten-particle-could-answer-mystery-of-why-we-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/812076\/","title":{"rendered":"Forgotten particle could answer mystery of why we exist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/\" title=\"Home\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Home<\/a><\/p>\n<p>       Published:<\/p>\n<p>       2026-10-20 09:50:00<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Crab Nebula in the Taurus constellation - credit NASA, ESA, J DePasquale (STScI)\" property=\"image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/nasa_esa_j._depasquale_stsci.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>       Crab Nebula in the Taurus constellation<\/p>\n<p class=\"uos-single-lead\">\n      Scientists have unveiled a new theory on the birth of the cosmos, suggesting the early universe was shaped by an ancient particle that has been overlooked for decades.\n     <\/p>\n<p>Their research tackles one of the greatest conundrums in modern physics \u2013 how matter triumphed over antimatter in the aftermath of the Big Bang.<\/p>\n<p>According to current theories, both should have annihilated each other after the colossal explosion, leaving nothing but an empty universe of pure energy.<\/p>\n<p>But physicists at the University of Southampton and the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur say they found a clue in a neutrino, one of the lightest particles in the universe.<\/p>\n<p>The team discovered that an often-ignored relative of these particles, known as a &#8216;decoupled&#8217; heavy neutrino, could have helped matter dominate over its counterpart.<\/p>\n<p>Author Dr Rishav Roshan from Southampton said: \u201cThis decoupled heavy neutrino has long been dismissed as an irrelevant background detail in particle physics.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHowever, it decays incredibly slowly. As the cosmos cooled after the Big Bang, the particle lived long enough that it temporarily took over the energy density of the universe and triggered a matter-dominated period.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The new paper has been published in <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/prl\/abstract\/10.1103\/nfkx-q6z7\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Physical Review Letters<\/a>, which is part of the American Physical Society journals.<\/p>\n<p>Most theories on why matter won over antimatter ignored the decoupled heavy particle because experts deemed it too weak to have any impact on others, added Dr Roshan.<\/p>\n<p>However, the Southampton and Kanpur researchers found that the forgotten particle could affect the particle\u2013antiparticle asymmetry essential for our existence.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe fact that we are here at all proves that an asymmetry between matter and antimatter occurred,\u201d added Dr Roshan.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe decoupled neutrino shifted the temperature in the early universe at which fundamental particles \u2013 like electrons and other leptons \u2013 interacted with their anti-particles with the help of Standard Model Higgs boson.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis temperature acts like a switch that shapes how the matter-antimatter imbalance was built up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Paper co-author Dr Sudipta Show from Kanpur said the findings change our understanding of how the early universe expanded so quickly after the Big Bang.<\/p>\n<p>He added: \u201cIt offers us a new explanation for how matter won.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe dramatic shift in the early expansion of the cosmos leaves distinct but detectable imprints of changes, for example on primordial gravitational waves.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese gravitational wave signatures open up new avenues for us to unravel the evolution of the early universe after the Big Bang.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read the paper at <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/prl\/abstract\/10.1103\/nfkx-q6z7\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">journals.aps.org\/prl\/abstract\/10.1103\/nfkx-q6z7<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Home Published: 2026-10-20 09:50:00 Crab Nebula in the Taurus constellation Scientists have unveiled a new theory on the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":812077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-812076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-gb","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}