Saturday - No symmetry for you

 Don't look for symmetry because it isn't there. If there was symmetry in the universe we wouldn't be here. What do I mean, you ask? Simple: in the beginning, at the moment when the big bang began to bang, there was matter and anti-matter and every time a matter particle met an anti-matter particle - kabang - they annihilated each other. What's that got to do with symmetry and us being here, you ask? Well, in the beginning when the big nothing - we really don't know what was or wasn't there at that precise pre-Planck moment - so when the big nothing banged big, there should have been equal amounts of matter and anti-matter and all of it should have eventually met - and I mean by eventually, a very short time because there was only a small volume of universe - and been kaboomed. In a symmetrical universe, no matter left, no anti-matter, no nothing except the occasional pair of virtual antithetical particles and little kabooming out of existence. And all there would be, I think, is a massless, high-energy photon soup with nobody around to slurp it up.

But in our universe, at the beginning when the Big whatever Banged, or whatever happened, there was a slight asymmetry - not much, probably one part in  a zillion kajillion or so, but enough so that when matter met anti-matter - you might say the match made in heaven - there were enough unpartnered particles, nerdy particles, ones just slightly less desired by an anti-particle somewhere, hanging around the snack table, pouring themselves another glass of punch, looking over their lonely particle shoulders at the explosive rave on the dance floor, they still unmatched and un-kaboomed, but  those wallflower particles mattered, as it were, so that a universe full of matter could expand, and then inflate and expand some more, and 14+ billion years later, I am here telling you that there is no symmetry in our universe, at least not true symmetry, only something that looks like an attempt at seeming symmetrical. Let's call it quasi-symmetry and that this is how it is.

Not that we had much choice.

A few asymmetrical photos.