Last updated: April 27, 2020 at 12:49 pm

Created on Saturday, 31 July 2010 16:30

There was a time, not so long ago, when science seemed to understand how the universe worked. Everything- us, the Earth, the stars, and even exotic-sounding supernovae- was made of atoms that were all created at time-zero: the Big Bang.

In between the atoms was nothing, a void: quite literally, 'space'.

But recently things have started to unravel. There is, it seems, a lot more to the universe than meets the eye. According to the best estimates, we only really know what about 4% of it is made of. But if only 4% is made of atoms what about the rest?

The rest is made of mysterious entities about which very little is understood with equally mysterious names: dark matter and dark energy.