• Question: Is red mater and dark mater real?

    Asked by to Edward, Ian, Mathew, Naomi, sakshisharda on 18 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Naomi Osborne

      Naomi Osborne answered on 18 Jun 2014:

      This is a great question!

      We do not understand why our galaxies are rotating as they are without being torn apart – so scientists know there’s something unknown holding them together, that being dark matter. We know visible matter only makes up 4% of our universe – so dark matter probably exists, scientists are just yet to prove it. That’s what scientists working with the Hadron Collider are doing – trying to find more clues about dark matter – perhaps one day you could join them and prove it’s real!

    • Photo: Edward Hughes

      Edward Hughes answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      Red matter is entirely fictional – it was made up for the Star Trek movie, I believe!

      I’d say dark matter definitely exists though. As Naomi says, there must be extra mass in the universe that’s invisible to us, otherwise the galaxies wouldn’t hold together. The trouble is, nobody knows what this is made of. There are lots of different theories – a lot of people think dark matter is made of a new particle called an axion. Recently there’s been evidence for the existence of axions by looking at the light from distant galaxies!

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