• Question: What is dark energy/matter?

    Asked by anon-191463 to Graeme, Agnes, Kathryn, Chris, Anne, Adam on 10 Nov 2018. This question was also asked by anon-191466, anon-190901.
    • Photo: Agnes Wojtusiak

      Agnes Wojtusiak answered on 10 Nov 2018: last edited 15 Nov 2018 3:20 pm


      Good question – if only anyone knew!!
      .
      We know that for the universe to look the way it does, there must be something making gravity strong enough to keep galaxies together, but we can’t see it – that’s dark matter. We also know that for the universe to keep speeding up how fast it expands, something that we can’t see must be pushing on it – that’s dark energy. We have no idea WHAT it actually is, but we’re trying to find out in places like the Boulby Underground Lab (it’s a really cool lab built deep underground in an old mine!).
      .
      There is a bit more in this really good YouTube video: https://youtu.be/QAa2O_8wBUQ – it’s by “Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell” and they do loads of fun videos about interesting science stuff, I recommend them 🙂

    • Photo: Anne Green

      Anne Green answered on 12 Nov 2018: last edited 12 Nov 2018 4:54 pm


      See my comment below for my answer to this.

    • Photo: Kathryn

      Kathryn answered on 13 Nov 2018:


      Great answer from Agnes Here.

    • Photo: Adam McGuinness

      Adam McGuinness answered on 13 Nov 2018: last edited 13 Nov 2018 12:43 pm


      What Agnes said, well done! Ooh, and Anne!

    • Photo: Graeme Poole

      Graeme Poole answered on 13 Nov 2018:


      85% of the Universe is made up of “dark matter”. The problem is we have no idea what it is!! Dark matter doesn’t interact with any experiments, so we can’t measure it. We know it exists because for galaxies to stay together and not fall apart, a lot more mass is needed than the stars and planets in the galaxies. So there is something else in them – this is dark matter.

      The Universe is expanding and the expansion is getting faster and faster. We have no idea what is driving this accelerating expansion – we call this mysterious energy “dark energy”

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