Fun Fact - The Universe Runs on Magic

So it turns out the universe doesn't work like it is supposed to. In our small little corner of the universe (i.e., the solar system, and the Milky Way galaxy it forms a very small part of) the great cosmic dance of stars and planets is arranged according to "fundamental forces." These include: strong nuclear force, electromagnetic energy, gravity, and something called weak force, which sounds like it would be simple, but is not. Anyway, these four forces, up until about ten years ago, were generally able to explain all the things that happen in the universe, even crazy things like black holes.

Given these fundamental forces, the general theory of the universe was that the universe started with a Big Bang, had been expanding ever since, that the expansion was slowing down, and eventually the universe would collapse back in on itself. Thank you Galileo, Newton, and Einstein.

But then, ten years ago, thanks to the Hubble space telescope, astrophysicists and astronomers made a fun discovery. And by fun I mean, mind-boggling. See the universe is expanding. But it isn't slowing down - it's speeding up.

"So what?," you may say. Well it turns out there is no explainable reason for that to happen. Imagine dropping a rock into a pond. It makes ripples. As the ripples go further out, they move slower. That's because things like water, rocks, and the light you see ripples by work according to the fundamental forces of the universe. Now imagine you drop a rock in the water and the further out the ripples go, the faster they go. That's what's happening in the universe.

There is no reason for that to happen. Scientists have proposed the existence of a new kind of energy - "dark energy" - which exists undetectable in the vacuum of space, does not interact with light, gravity, or any kind of matter we know anything about. It is this unknown and so far unknowable energy which somehow propels the ever-rapidly expanding universe.

Add to that the existence of "dark matter." Apparently, with the universe doing what it's doing, there has to be some other kind of matter in the universe for gravity to act on. There isn't enough non-dark matter in the universe - the kind that make up stars, planets, moons, and my dog - for gravity to work like it's supposed to. Our atoms should be flying apart. But, we're all still here, so there must be something else out there that is otherwise undetectable, but that the universe depends on to persist.


My first thought when hearing this was: why I have never heard about this before? Then I remembered that when astrophysicists talk, no one has any idea what they're talking about. Read this for an example.

But how great is that?! The universe as a whole plays by a completely different set of rules than everything else contained within the universe. I personally find that very exciting. But maybe I'm just weird.

P.S. Look at this -


96% of the universe is made of stuff we don't understand.
Isn't that great?!
Also, notice 3.6% of the universe is intergalactic gas. Inside, your inner 5 year-old is giggling.

P.S.S. The name of that graph is "Dark Matter Pie." That sounds delicious...