Everything around us – from our bodies to the stars – is made of matter. But according to our best theories, none of it should exist. The big bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter, and that should have caused the newborn universe to annihilate itself instantly. So why are we here?

In this video, we go behind the scenes at CERN, the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, to explore how scientists create, trap, transport and study antimatter at the appropriately named Antimatter Factory. Is there a tiny, fundamental difference between matter and antimatter? The answer could explain one of the oldest questions in science: Why is there something instead of nothing?

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Particle physics dives into the very depths of the universe – the particles that make up atoms. Over the past century, we have peeled back the layers and uncovered more about the make-up of subatomic particles than ever before, culminating in 2012 with the discovery of the Higgs boson, also called the God particle. Frank Close, the author of Infinity Puzzle and Elusive: How Peter Higgs solved the mystery of mass, has had a front-row seat to many of these revelations. He joins ��è����Ƶ reporter Alex Wilkins to talk about his career and all things particle physics, including how quarks group together and what it was like sitting on stage with Peter Higgs after the Large Hadron Collider found that elusive particle.

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Mark Thomson is the newly appointed director general of CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. CERN is the world’s biggest particle physics laboratory, and its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) smashes particles together at almost the speed of light to understand the fundamental nature of the universe. CERN has been responsible for groundbreaking new physics, most notably the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, and is a world leader in antimatter research. However, in order to probe even deeper, it must run at higher energy levels. We catch up with Thomson at an important juncture, as the LHC is due to shut down for two years for upgrades, paving the way for even more exciting physics. But is there anything left to discover? And are large particle accelerators the future of particle physics?

“There are really big questions that we don’t know the answer to,” says Thomson. “Big questions like dark matter. Is the Higgs boson a fundamental particle? Does the Higgs boson interact with the dark matter? At some point, we are going to find answers to some of these really, really big questions.”

Read more: The experiments that could finally explain gravity