Dark Energy & Dark Matter
- Over the past two or three decades, astronomers have gathered plenty of evidence helping us to understand the universe much better
- However, there are still many observations that are still not understood, including:
- Evidence from the rotation and motion of galaxies suggests that there is much more matter in the Universe than we are able to account for
- This unseen matter is given the name dark matter and its nature is not currently known
- Measurements of the expansion of the Universe using supernovae suggest that the Universe is starting to expand at a faster rate
- It has been suggested that this accelerated motion is caused by dark energy pushing everything in the Universe apart
- If gravity is present everywhere in the Universe, it might be expected that everything will one day become closer together, but that is the opposite of what we see
- This is another reason why dark energy is a possible solution which could be counteracting gravity and expanding the Universe instead
