Every atom in your body is what survived an annihilation: for roughly a billion matter-antimatter pairs that wiped each other out, about one matter particle was left over, and the entire material universe is built from that sliver. Earlier still, at 10⁻¹² seconds the four fundamental forces finally parted ways; at 10⁻⁶ seconds quarks lost their freedom and locked into protons and neutrons. Nuclear reactions shut down three minutes after the Big Bang, while light stayed trapped for another 380,000 years before escaping as the microwave background.
Every atom in your body is what survived an annihilation: for roughly a billion matter-antimatter pairs that wiped each other out, about one matter particle was left over, and the entire material universe is built from that sliver. Earlier still, at 10⁻¹² seconds the four fundamental forces finally parted ways; at 10⁻⁶ seconds quarks lost their freedom and locked into protons and neutrons. Nuclear reactions shut down three minutes after the Big Bang, while light stayed trapped for another 380,000 years before escaping as the microwave background.
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