• Question: What is the universe made of?

    Asked by Chickenman3000 to Arthur, Clare, Daniel, David, Tora on 13 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Clare Harding

      Clare Harding answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      The most common element in the universe is hydrogen so I guess most of the universe is made of that. However, about 90% of the mass of the universe is probably made up of dark matter but no ones has ever seen this or really knows what it is.

      In space there can be all sort of things, they have even found giant clouds of alcohol! But what there is mostly is empty space, there are about 6 atoms of hydrogen in 1 cubic meter of outer space.

    • Photo: Tora Smulders-Srinivasan

      Tora Smulders-Srinivasan answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      star stuff! As are we! ;-D

    • Photo: Daniel Parsons

      Daniel Parsons answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      Hi there,
      great question – this is a question that scientists are STILL working on! As Clare says the visible Universe is mostly made of hydrogen and the other matter (like Iron, Oxygen, Carbon etc etc.), called baryonic matter. But after years of study scientists counted everything they could see, weighed it all and came to a conclusion that there was loads missing from what should be there….
      Think of it like this…you weigh your house and its 5,000 kilograms…then you weigh everything in your house, all the furniture and the walls and the pictures and the air inside and everything and that only comes to 1,000 kilograms….you would conclude there must be something in your house that you can’t see and a lot of it too!
      Well, in terms of the Universe, this is what scientists did too…they weighed all the galaxies and noticed that there was lots missing…. scientists call this Dark Matter and Dark Energy….we know its there but we don’t know what it is or what it is made of! Some think that this dark matter is made of super big black holes…but no-one is sure yet!

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