Created in 2011, the Canadian site Visual Capitalist features infographics on topics such as technology, energy, and the global economy. This one, published on August 19, makes it possible to visualize everything that we know – or think we know – about the Universe.
Scientists agree that it consists of three distinct parts: the visible (or measurable) matter of everyday life, and two hypothetical components called “dark matter” and “dark energy”, for which we have no direct measurements.
Nevertheless, several scientific missions, piloted by space agencies, aim to study certain properties of our Universe in order to learn lessons about its composition. Thus, the ESA Planck mission, launched in 2009, aimed to measure the minute variations in temperature of radiation called the “cosmic microwave background radiation”.
Overall, Planck’s data tends to confirm the theory of cosmic inflation, one of the pillars of the standard model of cosmology. According to this theory, the Universe is constantly expanding. Its diameter is now estimated at 93 billion light-years.
A NASA mission scheduled for 2027 is expected to send the Nancy Grace Roman Infrared Telescope into space to measure the effects of dark energy and dark matter for the first time.