ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

CPT invariance

Okay kiddo, let's talk about CPT invariance. Have you ever played with mirror at home? When you look at yourself in a mirror, you see a reflection of yourself, right? But what if I told you that if you were to switch places with your reflection, everything would still look the same? That's kind of what CPT invariance means.

CPT stands for Charge-Parity-Time. It's a way to describe different properties of particles in physics. Now, let's break this down a bit. Charge refers to whether a particle has a positive or negative electric charge. Parity refers to whether something is symmetric (looks the same from different angles) or asymmetric (looks different from different angles). Time refers to whether something is happening now, or in the past or future.

CPT invariance means that if we were to switch the charge of a particle (making it negative if it was positive, for example), flip its parity (making it asymmetric if it was symmetric), and reverse time (like watching a movie backwards), then everything would still look the same. It's like the mirrored reflection in the mirror, everything is still the same but just flipped around.

Scientists use CPT invariance to make sure that their equations and theories of physics are consistent and make sense. It helps us to understand how particles interact with each other and why certain things happen the way they do.

So, in short, CPT invariance is a way of describing how particles behave in physics that tells us that if we were to switch certain properties of particles around, everything would still look the same.