Question: What is the universe made of?

Cat Scott ? answered on 15 Mar 2016:

ooh great question ✨ ✨ ✨ it’s quite complicated! Scientists think that everything in the Universe is made up of 3 basic types of stuff: ‘normal matter’, ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’

‘Normal matter’ is what it sounds like – everything normal: tables, chairs, people, grass, pens, horses, broccoli – everything that we can see, and these things are all made up of individual atoms (like carbon) that we think we understand

But when scientists add up all the ‘normal matter’ that we know exists in the Universe, there’s not enough stuff to account for everything that we know happens (because of some laws of physics, we know there has to be some other matter too otherwise the sums don’t add up)

This is where ‘dark matter’ comes in. We can’t see dark matter, but scientists think that it must exist in order for things to make sense. If it does exist it accounts for almost all of the matter in the Universe (more than 80%). We still don’t know exactly what it is – so if you would like an interesting job, I think being an astrophysicist and investigating dark matter would certainly keep you busy! 😀