The existence of dark energy is confirmed

The universe is too light. What?! Well, scientists have worked out how much the universe should weigh and how much substance it should contain, given the weight of matter, the size (height, length and breadth) of the universe and the time of it’s existence.

But, there is a problem. It is too light, and doesn’t have nearly enough substance. It is thought that ordinary matter such as stars, planets and gases only make up around 4% of the total weight of the universe. So where is the rest of it coming from?


That’s what scientists very recently think they have discovered. For a long time now there have been theories about so called ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ making up the difference, but until now, no actual proof.

However, the results from a major astronomical survey, which used the latest in hi-tech scientific technology and research methods to observe over 200,000 galaxies, appear to have confirmed the existence of dark energy.

The existence of dark energy appears to explain why the universe is expanding at an increasing rate. From what I understand, this is because the energy to some extent almost defies gravity, so if you were to throw a tennis ball, instead of eventually slowing down to a stop, dark energy would continue to increase the speed of the ball.

Scientists now believe that normal matter makes up around 4% of the universes weight, dark matter makes up around 22% and dark energy makes up the other 74%.

The matter that makes up the universe

A pie chart showing the percentages of the substances that make up the universe

We now have some proof of the existence of dark matter and dark energy, however there is still a very long way to go yet, before we discover the true secrets of our universe…

That is if we ever do!

14 thoughts on “The existence of dark energy is confirmed

  1. This is a wee bit off topic, but I can go there. πŸ™‚

    I suspect that when the physicists discover the true secrets of the universe, regular folks like me will just have to nod and accept their explanations. If they say there is dark matter, who am I to dispute it? They’ll look at as many galaxies as they must to prove their theories.

    • Christopher (admin team)

      “This is a wee bit off topic…” – How do you mean? Not your specialist area, or we shouldn’t be writing about it.
      If it’s the former, ignore me, if it’s the latter, Technology Bloggers is about everything, technology, science, blogging, computing, media etc. we write about a very broad spectrum of stuff, but our core topic is technology πŸ™‚

      I know what you mean, wacky scientists come up with all sorts of theories, we all just go along with them and carry on living our lives πŸ™‚

  2. Looks like plenty of theories are up for high school students in the upcoming years. πŸ™‚

    From my point of view, the universe is too big to be understood this easily. Just a draft, lets see what awaits us in the future.

    • Christopher (admin team)

      Should we just keep our head down and get on with everyday life, or do you believe that it is good for us to explore our universe and to try and make sense of it all?

      • Actually I am in favour of none. Neither we should just be too entwined in our daily lives that we do not give even a bit to get whats happening outside, nor I find myself into a position where I can myself explore the universe. All I can do is I can learn the facts and share them with others as soon as they come to light!

  3. I am not into science but I’ve found your post interesting. It’s amazing how we discover things from time to time. We already found answers/solutions to some of our questions before, what more if we perform more studies? All the things that are happening won’t be clueless anymore in the future.

    • Christopher (admin team)

      I don’t know Pete, I think that some things we just might never find the answers to, although I would agree that we are discovering more all the time!

  4. These things look to me like Star Trek episodes. The theory is really interesting, but i find it difficult to take it granted since it’s just theory.
    Till a few hundred years ago people had another theory: that the earth was flat.

    • Christopher (admin team)

      “i find it difficult to take it granted since it’s just theory” I know what you mean Antonia, but there is some evidence to back it up. Then again people looked at the earth and saw that was flat, so they had evidence too :-/

      Thanks for the comment, you are currently top of our ‘top commenters’ widget, (see below) bravo!

  5. This is a very interesting discovery. But I’m not really sure if I can witness with my eyes the complete explanation for this. I mean, it will surely take a very long time. But I think we should really understand that we have limitations. There are things in this universe that we can’t define.

    • Christopher (admin team)

      I know what you mean Adrian, this is one of the things that we can theories about, but the proof s that observed by machines etc. we can’t really get up close and say ‘ahh… so that’s how it works!’

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