Scientists have inched a step closer to solving an enduring mystery in physics — why the universe contains any matter at all — thanks to a newly combined analysis from two of the world's leading neutrino experiments.

By pooling nearly 16 years of measurements, the NOvA experiment in the United States and the T2K experiment in Japan have produced the most precise picture yet of how neutrinos and their antimatter twins transform as they travel. The results, published on Oct. 22 in the journal Nature, sharpen the search for subtle differences in how these particles behave — differences that may help explain why matter prevailed over antimatter in the early universe.

If the two are perfectly symmetric, according to the Standard Model of particle physics, the Big Bang should have created equa

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