Alex McColgan

Join me as we reveal how astronomers have snatched a glimpse of the near-invisible network that underpins the cosmos, finally revealing the hiding place for our universe's missing visible matter.

And with it,

Let's start unraveling the truth behind our cosmic evolution.

When we measure all of the gas, dust, planets, stars and galaxies, everything we can see in the whole universe, using everything from infrared to visible light and beyond to gamma rays, it adds up to a colossal amount.

More than 100 sextecillion kilograms.

That's 10 with 53 zeros after it.

But really, this only accounts for a small fraction of the total matter that scientists predict to exist.

In fact, this visible ordinary matter is thought to make up just 5% of the universe.

The rest is stuff we don't completely understand.

Dark matter is believed to account for 27%, and dark energy 68%.

Despite their names, dark energy isn't related to dark matter.

What they have in common is that we can't detect or see them.

Dark energy is thought to be a seemingly invisible type of energy, causing the universe's expansion to accelerate over time.

And dark matter is a type of matter that has mass, but is invisible to us, as it doesn't absorb, reflect, or emit any light.

I've talked about dark energy in previous videos, and that is truly its own mystery.

You can explore those if you're interested to find out more about the topic.

But for this video, I'll just focus on the matter at hand.

So, 95% of our universe is likely not made of visible, ordinary matter.

And of the 5% that is technically visible matter, also known as baryonic matter, about 40% has been missing since the big bang 13.8 billion years ago.

Now, I know what you're thinking.