What is the universe made out of?

Question: What is the universe made out of?
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Asked by 262txce42 to Anais, katy, Lauren, Richard, Stuart on 8 Mar 2016.
- Katy Kellett answered on 8 Mar 2016:
  
  Wow big question! When you take it down to fundamentals the universe is made up of loads of particles. These particles can be described as making up three types of matter, normal, dark and dark energy.
  
  The easiest one for us all to envisage is normal matter…it is what makes up the stars and the earth, humans and everything we know and love. But amazingly this is thought to only be about 10% maximum of the universe.
  
  Everything else is dark matter or dark energy and well even the clever cloggs at NASA and areas like that are not 100% sure what that consists of. They argue a lot about it between them. But the one thing we do know if that it is particles, its just how they exists that people are questioning.
  
  I am sure the other scientists in the groups can add more about this!
- Anais Kahve answered on 8 Mar 2016:
  
  Hello, good question. This is not my area of expertise but I do know that the universe is 99 % empty space!
- Lauren Laing answered on 8 Mar 2016:
  
  At the moment, scientists think the universe consists of 3 types of substance: normal matter, ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’.
  
  Normal matter consists of the atoms that make up stars, planets, human beings and every other visible object in the Universe. Everything you see around you, from your own body to the planet you’re standing on and the stars in the sky, is made of atoms!
- Stuart Atkinson answered on 8 Mar 2016:
  
  Hi. Interesting question. I can’t add much more to the other great answers, but it seems that normal matter (protons, neutrons and electrons) amounts to less than 5% of what the Universe is made of. It was only in the latter half of the 20th century that astronomers started to realise that the Universe wasn’t heavy enough to be doing the things it does! Sounds a bit odd, I know. For example, they looked at rotating spiral galaxies and were able to calculate their mass, but found the visible matter (stars, dust) only accounted for a fraction of it, hence they proposed the existence of dark matter to make up the difference. Exactly what this matter consists of is still open to question. The third component of the Universe, dark energy, is used to explain things such as the increasing expansion of the Universe.
  
  If you’re interested, the average temperature of interstellar space is pretty cold (about 2 to 3K) (that’s about minus 270C!). Also there isn’t much matter there (about 1 atom of hydrogen per cubic centimetre).

Question: What is the universe made out of?

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