Marco’s talk will cover one of the biggest mysteries around the Big Bang: why are we living in a Universe of matter, which seems all but devoid of antimatter? The Big Bang created equal amounts of matter and antimatter, which subsequently annihilated to pure energy. Well, almost: a tiny asymmetry in the processes involving the very first subatomic particles led to a relatively small amount of leftover matter, just enough to make up all of the Universe as we know it today.

Marco’s research involves studies of these tiny asymmetries in particles containing quarks, some of matter’s fundamental building blocks. He’s researching a theory that describes matter-antimatter asymmetries related to quarks and this has proven very successful so far. Earlier this year, a dedicated experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has discovered the last missing piece in the puzzle: matter-antimatter asymmetry in charm quarks. Marco will describe how they made this measurement and how it fits in the bigger picture. So where do bananas come in? The clue is antimatter, come and find out!