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Asked by anon-356736 on 13 Mar 2023. This question was also asked by anon-361455.
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Vicky Fawcett answered on 13 Mar 2023:
About 5% of space (and the entire universe) is made of “normal” matter, so things like stars, planets, galaxies, me and you.
23% is a mysterious thing called “dark matter”, which gets its name from the fact we can’t see it! We know there is some hidden matter that can feel the effect of gravity, but we can’t see it like we can the stars and galaxies. We just know it’s there because without it the galaxies would not spin like they do.
The remaining 72% is a really really strange thing called “dark energy”. We don’t know what dark matter is, but we sort of know where it is and how it works. We have not a clue what dark energy is, but it makes up most of the universe!!
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Lucien Heurtier answered on 13 Mar 2023:
Well, space is mostly empty really (look how far is the Earth from the Sun, and between the two there is not much…). But for the rest, Vicky already gave a detailed answer and you can trust what she writes 😉
There is also a lot of debates about what space actually is. Are we living on a gigantic balloon, or donut, and we keep turning around it? Is space made of a network? Are we living inside a black hole? there are so many theories about space!!!
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Joshua Bibby answered on 13 Mar 2023:
The other answers have explained what space is made up of but I think just understanding how EMPTY space is is important. I’m not a astrophysicist myself but Dr Alastair Gunn (an astrophysicist at the university of Manchester) in an interview explained that in our solar system there are 5 atoms per cubic centimetre on average. This is about a 10000000 trillion atoms less than earths atmosphere at sea level. And the space between galaxies is hundreds of times ’emptier’ than our solar system.
The most important thing to remember is space is very, very big and just as empty.
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