• Question: What is the universe made of?

    Asked by mazzie10 to Damien, Rachael, Simon, Suzi, Tim on 20 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Damien Hall

      Damien Hall answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      @mazzie10 Another excellent question that books could be written about …

      I think that, according to at least some theories at the moment, we don’t know what most of the Universe actually is! That’s because it’s (theoretically) made up of this substance called dark matter, which would help us explain a lot of astronomical observations that haven’t turned out in quite the way they were predicted to – but no-one’s actually managed to observe any dark matter yet, which is a small problem …

      At the level we can see and know about, the Universe is simply everything that exists, so the solid parts are made up of various combinations of the elements of the periodic table, and most of it is a vacuum – nothingness.

      Does that help? I hope so!

    • Photo: Suzi Gage

      Suzi Gage answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      Hi @mazzie10
      Damien’s answer is great.
      Basically the Universe is made up of all the atoms we know about, and potentially a load of other stuff we don’t yet know about!

      Sorry I can’t give you a better answer than that!

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