The invisible forces that make up 95% of our universe
In short: Everything we see—stars, planets, and people—accounts for less than five percent of the cosmos. The rest is a mysterious landscape dominated by two invisible phenomena: one that clumps galaxies together like cosmic glue, and another that stretches the fabric of space apart at an accelerating rate.
Dark matter and dark energy are the primary architects of our universe's structure and evolution. While they remain largely mysterious, we know they dominate the cosmos. Dark matter provides the gravitational scaffolding for the universe; it makes up most of the mass in galaxies and galaxy clusters. Without its extra gravitational pull, many galaxies would fly apart or fail to form entirely. We detect its presence through 'gravitational lensing'—where its gravity bends light from distant sources—and by observing that outer regions of spiral galaxies rotate faster than visible matter alone should allow.
Conversely, the term dark energy describes that enigmatic force propelling the universe's rapid outward growth. Since the Big Bang approximately 13.8 billion years ago, space has been expanding, but dark energy acts as a force stretching that space apart like the surface of an inflating balloon. While dark matter works to 'clump stuff together,' dark energy works to pull it apart. Scientists use high-performance cosmological N-body simulations, such as AbacusSummit, to predict how these competing forces shape large-scale structures over billions of years.
The relationship between the two is one of the greatest challenges in modern astronomy. While they are distinct—one being a source of gravity and the other an expansionary influence—they both represent 'something amiss' in our current understanding of physics. Researchers are currently using tools like the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) to map over one-third of the sky, aiming to decode the underlying physics of dark energy and better understand how these forces have governed cosmic history for 13.7 billion years.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Are Dark Matter & Dark Energy Related?
- Also: Dark Energy and Dark Matter | Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
- Also: Science 101: Dark Matter and Dark Energy
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