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Short Wave

What Is Dark Energy? Physicists Aren't Even Sure

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.7 β€’ 6K Ratings

πŸ—“οΈ 5 May 2020

⏱️ 15 minutes

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Summary

Dark energy makes up almost 70% of our universe and is believed to be the reason the universe is expanding. Yet very, very little is known about it. To figure out what we do know β€” and what it could tell us about the fate of the universe, we talked to astrophysicist Sarafina Nance. She studies cosmology, a field that looks at the origin and development of the universe.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, Maddie Sifai here with a quick note ahead of today's show.

0:04.0

We know that there are a lot of things people need right now, and information is one of them.

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0:15.2

to keep you informed.

0:17.5

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0:22.3

you rely on from this podcast available to everyone, free of charge.

0:27.8

To help us do that, visit donate.npr.org-short.

0:32.8

Thanks.

0:33.8

You're listening to Shortwave from MPR.

0:39.8

Going out into nature, hiking, paddling, looking up at the stars has always helped me center

0:48.0

myself.

0:51.4

It reminds me that I'm just Madeline Kelly Sifaya, one human among millions of critters

0:58.1

and trees and galaxies that don't care about me or acknowledge me at all.

1:05.4

I'm just a group of random atoms, matter taking up space.

1:11.1

And it turns out that matter as we normally think of it is a tiny, tiny portion of the

1:17.7

universe.

1:19.0

Meaning your genes, the ocean, trees, computers, all the stars and planets, all of that is only

1:27.4

5% of the universe.

1:30.4

And the rest of the stuff is dark matter and dark energy.

1:35.8

Right.

1:36.8

Which is wild.

1:37.8

That's so much of it.

...

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