• Question: how does the universe expand?

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      Asked by anon-287537 on 17 Mar 2021.
      • Photo: Martin McCoustra

        Martin McCoustra answered on 17 Mar 2021:

        The Universe was formed in a big explosion… the Big Bang… and the expansion of the universe is a result of that event.

      • Photo: Jesko Koehnke

        Jesko Koehnke answered on 18 Mar 2021:

        We don’t know. We know that it does, and one of the great challenges in physics today is to work out how it is happening. The force/stuff/whatever it is that makes the universe expand is called dark energy. But we might as well call it Brian, because we have no idea what it is.

        By the way, Dark energy/matter were called that way to make fun of the original idea, to ridicule the people who came up with it. That was THE SAME with the Big Bang. People called it that to make fun of the idea, and the name stuck.

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