Dark Energy, Dark Matter and Anti-Gravity: Hidden in Plain Sight (Hot Science)

The expansion of the universe has not been slowing due to gravity, as everyone thought, it has been accelerating.

Maybe it was a result of a long-discarded version of Einstein’s theory of gravity, one that contained what was called a “cosmological constant.” Maybe there was some strange kind of energy-fluid that filled space. Maybe there is something wrong with Einstein’s theory of gravity and a new theory could include some kind of field that creates this cosmic acceleration.

It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest – everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter – adds up to less than 5% of the universe. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn’t be called “normal” matter at all, since it is such a small fraction of the universe.

Balungi Francis explains this major conundrum in modern science and looks at how scientists are beginning to find solutions to it. bit.ly/thenexteinstein or bit.ly/findyogeniusnow