What’s darkish matter? What’s it made out of? How do we all know it exists? : Brief Wave : NPR

A simulation of the formation of darkish matter constructions from the early universe till as we speak.

Ralf Kaehler/NASA/SLAC Nationwide Accelerator Laboratory, American Museum of Pure Historical past

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Ralf Kaehler/NASA/SLAC Nationwide Accelerator Laboratory, American Museum of Pure Historical past

A simulation of the formation of darkish matter constructions from the early universe till as we speak.

Ralf Kaehler/NASA/SLAC Nationwide Accelerator Laboratory, American Museum of Pure Historical past

Darkish matter is invisible. It is throughout us. And we don’t know what it’s.

The universe is a lot greater than what folks can see. Seen matter — which makes up the issues you may see like the bottom, the Solar, the display you are studying this on — makes up solely about 4 or 5 p.c of the recognized universe. Scientists like Priyamvada Natarajan, an astrophysicist at Yale College, say that darkish matter is the majority of the matter that exists. However as a result of it does not work together with mild, we have now only a few methods to straight study it.

On this episode, we discuss to Priya about how scientists first found darkish matter, why we care about finding out it and what it might probably inform us concerning the universe we dwell in.

This episode is a part of Brief Wave’s house camp sequence about all of the bizarre, fantastic issues occurring within the universe. Try the full sequence.

Questions concerning the state of our universe or smaller happenings right here on planet Earth? Electronic mail us at shortwave@npr.org — we would love to contemplate it for a future episode!

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This episode was produced by Hannah Chinn. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez. Regina G. Barber checked the info. The audio engineer was Gilly Moon.

Particular due to our buddies on the U.S. House & Rocket Middle, Residence of House Camp®.