The “Dark” Side of our universe: What is Dark Matter and Dark Energy?

The phone or computer you are reading this on, the chair you are sitting on, our planet, stars, galaxies… in short, everything we see and observe makes up only 4% of our known universe. The rest is the “Dark” side.

According to the graph, 74% of our universe is dark energy, 22% is dark matter, and 4% is made up of the gases, stars, planets, etc. that we know of. We call these parts “dark” because we cannot describe them. But how do we know this matter exists?

In the 20th century, Edward Hubble observed that the redshift effect was greater in distant galaxies. In other words, the farther a galaxy was from us, the faster it was moving away. From this, we deduced that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.

We can measure this expansion using observations based on Hubble’s law. We can confirm the existence of dark energy through these measurements and even estimate its quantity. This matter, which is evenly distributed throughout the universe, also has a pushing force that accelerates the universe’s expansion.

The idea that dark matter must exist is based on the notion that there must be something hidden in the universe that creates an extra gravity force that we cannot see. This is because when we go beyond the galaxies, we reach incredible speeds, and the gravity created by the matter we observe is not enough to hold them together. An extra force was also needed for stars to form during the birth of the universe.

Detecting dark matter, which does not absorb, reflect, emit or interact with electromagnetic forces, is quite difficult. To truly understand our universe, we need to be able to identify this “Mystery” that makes up one-fifth of the universe and can revolutionize our perception of science and technology.