• Question: What is the universe made of?

    Asked by Coco to Martin, Leonie, Alan on 5 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Alan McCue

      Alan McCue answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      Well the universe seems (to my limited understanding) be made of two ‘things’. We have a huge amount of empty space and we have lots of atoms which are clustered together to form molecules or solids. In other words, the universe is full of chemistry 🙂

    • Photo: Leonie Bole

      Leonie Bole answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      I have to agree with Alan! As a chemist, I am inclined (and probably extremely biased) to say that the universe is made of millions of different combinations of chemicals!
      I wonder what the physicists and biologists would say…

    • Photo: Martin McCoustra

      Martin McCoustra answered on 6 Mar 2018:

      I’d agree with Alan and Leonie to some extent. The Universe we occupy is made from matter and energy (the two linked through Einstein’s very famous equation). I would also agree that chemistry plays a key role in modifying that matter and in controlling the present-day Universe. However, astrophysicists believe that there is also a lot of dark matter and dark energy in the Universe. They argue that there isn’t enough normal matter to stop the Universe expanding for ever and normal matter alone doesn’t explain the distribution of galaxies in the Universe. They say we need dark matter to do both of these. What this dark matter and energy actually is… I’d ask an astrophysicist.

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