What is Dark Energy?

Since the big bang 15 billion years ago, the universe has been constantly expanding. In fact, it’s still expanding – and at a faster rate as time goes on. Scientists have suggested that ‘dark energy’ is the force behind the universe’s continued and accelerated expansion.

This expansion is creating a huge amount of potentially ‘empty’ space around the universe. Is this space definitely empty? Maybe not. Albert Einstein was the first to suggest that space is not empty. We have an ever-expanding universe, and it’s not just completely dead, empty space. If it were completely empty, then why would it be expanding? The space could be full of dark energy, which would also allow the ‘empty space’ to expand.

Dark expansion

Dark energy makes up around 70% of the universe. It acts in opposition to gravity. It explains why the universe is expanding, to some degree. While gravity pulls things inwards – stars and planets, for instance – dark energy is an outward force. The exponential nature of the expansion might be evidence that dark energy is actually getting stronger.

Unfortunately, the ‘dark’ part of the name means that we don’t know exactly what dark energy is or where it comes from. We don’t currently have means to observe and assess this mysterious force. However, from what we know about physics generally, energy is created from mass. So what about when there is no mass to convert to energy? This is where dark energy comes in. Dark energy is thought to be the universe’s residual energy.

Generating dark energy

The physics of quantum mechanics allows matter and energy to appear from nothing for tiny moments. A constant appearance and disappearance of matter and energy could go some way to explaining a constant presence of dark energy in space. It also makes it possible that the force could yet slow down, or even disappear. It really is an area that is unexplored compared to other scientific fields.

There is certainly a call for more research to get more data about dark energy. However, can there ever be such a thing as too much data? ‘Data: Do We Have Too Much of a Good Thing?’ looks at the possibility that too much data may actually lead to less knowledge. We could be losing the value of the data because there is so much of it to handle, in so many formats, from so many sources.