It would be silly to think we completely understand our universe, given how small the Earth is compared to the vastness of the cosmos. But from here on our tiny planet, it appears that much of the universe is missing. And I’m not just talking about dark matter. Regular stuff seems to be missing, too.
Astronomy fans probably know that as far as humans can tell, the universe is composed mostly of some mysterious, unexplained energy called dark energy that pushes it apart. The remaining piece, about a quarter, is dark matter, another unexplained thing that seems to build the universe’s skeleton. Just 4 percent is the regular matter that we can see: stars, planets, and interstellar and intergalactic gas. But the observed amount of this regular matter still falls perhaps a third short of the amount of stuff that physicists think should exist based on their models of the universe.
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