• Question: WHAT IS DARK MATTER

    Asked by to Fiona, Kevin on 27 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Kevin O'Dell

      Kevin O'Dell answered on 27 Jun 2014:

      OK. Not my field, but I’ve been very brave and looked it up on line. It’s horribly complicated, but I think it’s something like this.

      Physicists and Astronomers have lots of different ways of measuring what is out there in the universe. So by a combination of routes (which involves a lot of complex maths) they’ve calculated the weight of everything in the universe. Telescopes also let us see lots of things in the universe. However, the weight of everything we can see, is much less than the weight of everything we calculate is there. So there is something out there in the universe that has weight, but we can’t see it. This is the Dark Matter.

      I didn’t know this half an hour ago, so thanks for asking the question!

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