96% of the Universe is a Mystery! Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]85% of the gravity of the universe has no known origin. So, we'll call it dark matter, but we don't know what it is. We don't even know if it's matter. We measure that. We didn't pull that out of our ass. We measure this force in the universe, and we gave it a name. It's possible to talk about something if you can measure it, even if you don't know what's causing it. Then, there's a mysterious pressure in the vacuum of space that is forcing an acceleration of the universe opposite the wishes of gravity. That's what we call dark energy. We can measure that. A Nobel Prize was given for the first measurement of dark energy way back in 2011.

[00:00:41]We don't know what's causing that, either. Add up dark matter and dark energy, it is 96% of what's driving this universe. It's a curious state of existence to say we know enough about the universe to quantify how much we don't know.

[00:00:57]And it's most of it.