Question: It is known that the Universe is made 70% of dark energy but what is that dark energy?

Asked by ancapavel23 to Alice, Andi, Bas, Daniel, Rhian on 13 Mar 2015.

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  1. Photo: Bas van den BergBas van den Berg
    answered on 13 Mar 2015:

    Hi Ancapavel,

    Very good question! if we only knew the answer…the problem is, we don’t.
    Even though scientists are working hard to answer many questions and solve problems, there are still many many things unknown about our earth and our universe. One of the biggest mysteries is this dark energy and dark matter, which make up about 95% of all the matter in the universe. So, that means that all the stars and galaxies and everything we see in the universe is only 5% of everything there actually is! About the other 95% we actually don’t have a real good idea.

    So how do we know the dark energy must be there?
    We measure that the universe is actually expanding faster than we would expect based on the amount of energy and matter we know of. So somehow there is an extra type of energy (and lots of it!) throughout the universe that causes this expansion to go faster than expected. What this energy is however, we don’t know. It just shows that the universe is gigantic and we are only a very tiny piece in it all…which is good to realize! Also it shows that, even though we try hard, scientist still have a lot of questions that need to be answered. Maybe you can help us out somewhere in the future? would you be interested? and if so, what kind of question would you like to answer? please let me know!

    cheers,
    Bas

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  2. Photo: Alice MarzocchiAlice Marzocchi
    answered on 15 Mar 2015:

    Hi!
    We’ve talked a bit about dark matter in here if you want to read about it: /2015-zone/2015/03/12/what-is-the-darck-matter-and-where-is-created/
    The main point is that we really don’t know, as Bas was also saying, and maybe we never will.
    Dark matter can’t be observed with telescopes, it doesn’t emit or absorb light and other radiations…so it’s really hard to observe with our current methods.
    This is actually a term created by astrophysicists to describe behaviours that they couldn’t otherwise explain, which suggested the existence of something else that they hadn’t considered before and that they couldn’t see.
    So the dark matter is actually an hypothetical matter. This is a widely accepted scientific theory, but apparently there are also some alternative ones. But I’m really not an expert in astrophysics, so I’m afraid I don’t know much more about it!

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  3. Photo: Rhian MearaRhian Meara
    answered on 16 Mar 2015:

    good question with good answers! there’s nothing more I can add! 🙂

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