DARK MATTER: THE INVISIBLE MASS SHAPING THE UNIVERSE

We can’t see dark matter. It doesn’t emit, absorb, or reflect light. Yet its gravity is impossible to ignore.

Galaxies rotate faster than the visible matter inside them should allow. Light from distant galaxies bends around invisible mass. And in the famous Bullet Cluster, the gravitational mass appears separated from much of the hot ordinary matter.

Together, these observations provide powerful evidence for an unseen form of matter that makes up roughly 27% of the universe—far more than ordinary matter, which accounts for about 5%.

But here’s the mystery:

We still don’t know what dark matter actually is.

Scientists have proposed candidates including WIMPs, axions, and other hypothetical particles, but no candidate has yet been conclusively confirmed.

Dark matter may be invisible to our telescopes—but its gravitational fingerprints are written across the cosmos. 

What do you think dark matter could be?