Question: what is the dark side of the universe

Pete Edwards answered on 15 Jun 2010:

Hi lily – I hope you’re sitting down to read this!
When you look up at the night sky you can see the shiny stuff – the stars and planets that we see as they reflect the light from our sun. BUT the stuff that we can see only makes up around 4% of the universe around us! Think of our universe as a giant iceberg – the stuff that makes us, stars and planets forms the tip of the iceberg that we can see floating about the surface of the ocean but there is a whole load of other stuff below the surface that we can’t see and don’t understand right now. We give these unknown things the names Dark Matter and Dark Energy, but that’s all we can do, give them names! We don’t understand what they are.
So we sit here today only understanding about 4% of the universe around us – we don’t understand the dark side of the universe – yet!
This is what we are trying to do in Durham – reveal the nature of the dark side……………