A Proposed Mechanism for Charge Acquisition: Why the Matter–Antimatter Asymmetry Was Inevitable

This paper proposes an amendment to the Standard Big Bang model, confined only to the epoch between 10⁻⁴³ and 10⁻⁶ seconds after the Big Bang: electric charge is not an innate property of fundamental particles but is acquired through interaction with a new field — the Charge Field (hereafter CF). This is analogous to the acquisition of mass through the Higgs field. Prior to the activation of the CF, particles existed as base particles — possessing spin but carrying neither mass nor charge. The CF became activated at electroweak symmetry breaking and assigned charge to these previously chargeless base particles through its vacuum expectation value. The framework demonstrates that the matter–antimatter asymmetry was inevitable: before the CF activated, the distinction between matter and antimatter did not exist, because that distinction arises solely from charge. The entire pre-existing pool of base particles became matter through deterministic coupling; only after the CF was active did pair production yield equal quantities of matter and antimatter, exactly as observed. From this single postulate — that charge is acquired, not innate — eight demonstrable consequences follow: (i) the inevitability of the matter–antimatter asymmetry, (ii) the composite nature of the down quark, (iii) the Majorana nature of the neutrino, (iv) confinement driven by structural incompatibility of fractional charges, (v) the origin of integer hadron charges, (vi) the origin of charge quantisation, (vii) a physical origin for the law of conservation of charge, and (viii) the derivation of the universe’s composition from the CF’s neutrality equation. In particular, the neutrality equation determines the production ratio of quarks to electrons and the exact balance between protons and electrons that permits neutral atoms. The composition of the universe is therefore not accidental but a derived consequence. The framework respects the experimental foundations of the Standard Model, reproduces all established results, and yields independently falsifiable predictions — including leptonic substructure within the down quark and neutrinoless double beta decay. A companion paper developing the mathematical formalism — including the CF Lagrangian, anomaly cancellation, and the derivation of all charge values from first principles — is in preparation.