Hot on the heels of results from Fermilab, in America, which reported last week on an esoteric phenomenon called charge-conjugation/parity (cp) violation involving equally esoteric subatomic particles known as DO-mesons, a second research group, the Daya Bay Collaboration of more than 40 institutions, mainly from China and America, has found a related result involving neutrinos, cp violation is an asymmetry between matter and antimatter and the experiment, based at a complex of nuclear reactors 50km (30 miles) north of Hong Kong, has settled a longstanding puzzle that bears on the question of whether neutrinos, too, experience it. That, in turn, is related to the deeper question of why the universe is made of matter rather than having originally had equal amounts of matter and antimatter. If such a primordial equity had prevailed, the two would have annihilated each other, leaving a universe filled only with energy.
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