44 | New Scientist | 29 February 2020
An matter
of patience
An enigmatic mirror world
could finally resolve the
greatest mystery of our
own – why it exists, says
Richard Webb
S
URE, the big bang is cool, in a hot sort
of way. The beginning of all things.
Space, time, matter and energy bursting
into existence from a pinprick of infinite
temperature and density. Space racing away
from itself faster than the speed of light.
Maybe even the making of a multiverse.
But a second moment shortly afterwards
doesn’t get half the press. Perhaps that is
because it is when precisely nothing happened.
Call it an anti-moment.
It is when all the matter that suddenly and
inexplicably came into being in the big bang
equally suddenly and inexplicably failed to go
out of being again. When it didn’t cease to be
available to create stars, galaxies, planets, an
unquantified quantity of questioning life and,
on one world at least, some highly embarrassed
physicists who predicted exactly that. “TheFeatures Cover story