4 ms·
Every kind of matter that we know about makes up less than 5% of the believed matter in the universe. What's the rest? "Dark matter" and "dark energy" which are
by rictic 8y ago
Every kind of matter that we know about makes up less than 5% of the believed matter in the universe. What's the rest? "Dark matter" and "dark energy" which are effectively empty placeholders. We know almost nothing about them, and yet they're the overwhelming majority of what exists.
Maybe they'll turn out to be boring and useless. Maybe they have even more complex interactions than ordinary matter does. About all we can say today is that there's a mystery 20x more massive than all known matter.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago'Almost nothing' is not quite right. We know the fraction to 3 or 4 decimal places. 'What it is' may still be a question but we know precisely what it does
- colordrops 8y agoDescribing the amount there is and that it exerts gravitational pull says almost nothing about it, assuming it's as complex as anything else in the universe.
- simonh 8y agoWe also know that, other than via gravity, if it does interact with matter or EM radiation at all it does so spectacularly weakly.