Did You Know We Have No Idea What 95% Of The Universe Is Made Of?
When we look up at the night sky and see all the thousands of twinkling stars, it is natural to start wondering about what it is like out there and just how big the whole universe is.
Well, the universe is unfathomably large and who knows, it just might be an infinitely large universe, we might be living in. This realisation blows people's minds as it is almost impossible to imagine something infinite in our heads.
If that was not enough though, the fact that we don't even understand what 95% of the universe is made up of, will surely leave you scratching your head.
All the hundreds of billions of stars, planets, asteroids, gas, dust or anything that we have ever observed, forms less than 5% of the universe. So, what's the rest of it?
Dark Matter & Dark Energy
Scientists have proposed that the rest of the universe contains dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter is said to account for 27% of the universe and dark energy is said to account for 68%, leaving the "normal matter" that we can observe at around 5%.
Dark matter is called dark because it doesn't interact with light and is invisible to the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Dark implies that it is invisible. Although we haven't directly observed it, it's presence can be seen by the way it interacts with gravity.
We know that it is there and spread throughout the universe. In fact, scientists think that dark matter is what helped create galaxies and keep them intact. Without dark matter, galaxies wouldn't form or would get scattered away.
Dark energy on the other hand is an even bigger mystery. We haven't been able to detect it, directly or indirectly. Since it is hypothesized to account for 68% of the universe, it is considered to permeate all of space and is also considered as the reason for the increasing expansion of the universe.
So, there you have it folks. No matter how much we seem to discover, it always seems like we are just starting. As far as understanding the nature of reality goes, we have barely even started. This, is why science is so exciting!
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Thanks for this :)
Kind of like most people don't know what the hell they are talking about 95% of the time (-:
hahaha so true!!
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Thanks :)
I wouldn't be surprised if our current models are missing something.
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They sure are! Or else we would already have a theory of everything.
I remember coming across the term 'dark energy' and 'dark matter' while reading a magazine article way back in 2010. I didn't understood at that time what it was and now even after so many years we still haven't able to theorize what does dark matter or energy actually consists of nor do we have sufficient scientific claims to prove its existence satisfactorily.
Yeah for sure. This goes to show how bizzare the nature of reality is. We just can't seem to figure out what they are!
dark energy/matter has no empirical evidence to support it.
no more than fairy dust and unicorn farts.
Dark matter has some evidence for it like gravitational lensing and the its gravitational effect on matter in galaxies and so on. Dark energy on the other hand is a completely hypothetical thing.
nope....there IS evidence...but it's pure conjecture that it's evidence of pixie dust.
it could be evidence of something else.