The invisible glue of the cosmos is mostly unseen

Space · Published 22 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Everything you see—from the stars in the sky to the shoes on your feet—makes up only a tiny fraction of reality. The rest of the universe is composed of mysterious substances that do not emit, reflect, or absorb light, yet they dictate the structure and fate of everything we know.

Three main elements make up our cosmos: dark energy, normal matter, and dark matter. Although atoms within humans, planets, and stars constitute normal matter, this only represents between 1% and 10% of everything. Because this visible matter is so sparse, scientists have had to look for something else to explain the gravitational behavior of galaxies. This 'missing' substance was first identified as an anomaly in the 1930s when astronomers noticed that galaxies within clusters were moving too fast to be held together by visible gravity alone.

In 1933, Swiss-born astronomer Fritz Zwicky studied the Coma Cluster and observed this discrepancy. He realized that for these galaxies to stay bound rather than flying apart, there must be an invisible form of matter providing extra gravity. He dubbed this 'dunkle Materie,' or dark matter. Unlike ordinary matter, it does not interact with the electromagnetic spectrum, making it impossible to see directly. However, because it takes up space and holds mass, its presence is revealed by how it influences the motion of visible objects.

While dark matter acts as the 'glue' organizing galaxies, dark energy serves a different role. Originally proposed by Albert Einstein as a 'cosmic energy,' it was reintroduced in the 1990s after observations of exploding stars showed that the universe's expansion is accelerating. In the current 'concordance model,' dark energy makes up about 70% of the cosmos, while dark matter accounts for roughly 25%. Despite decades of research and ongoing experiments, the exact nature of these substances remains one of the greatest mysteries in astrophysics.

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