Nov 2, 2026 · 46 min · 10 segments
Does understanding the universe leave less room for God? Do you have to choose between science and faith? Astrophysicist Dr Alex Merson, a former NASA postdoctoral fellow at the Jet Propulsion…
Well, Alex, one of the things that we were hoping to talk to you about today is a, I kind of, it took me a while to process this when I first read it and started thinking about this episode.
But so I think on NASA's website, it actually says that the universe is made up of three components.
Normal or visible matter is 5%.
So essentially 5% of what we can see and interact with, there appears to be another 95% that we just don't even really understand what it is.
I mean, is that true? And I guess in maybe just sort of simple terms, how can we think about dark matter, dark energy? What is that? How
do we understand that? So I think, yeah, the latest, as far as I'm aware, kind of the latest current theories are saying that is still, that is correct.
It is kind of, it stems from, I mean, I can take each one in turn and say dark matter, for example, that it stems from But both dark matter and dark energy stem from strange observations that were made.
So dark matter, for example, I guess in the 20th century, various astronomers, they found very strange measurements in the observations of galaxies or clusters of galaxies.
the orbital speed of stars as a distance from the center of that particular galaxy they were measuring.
And they found they'd expect, like with the solar system, the planets on the edge orbit slower.
So they expected to find that under classical mechanics and from what they could see, that the stars on the outskirts of the galaxy would orbit slower than the stars near the center.
But they found that stars on the outskirts were orbiting just as fast as stars near the center, which can only happen if there's a lot more matter, a lot more mass in that galaxy, more than what they could see.
And they saw a similar thing with clusters of galaxies orbiting inside those structures.
It doesn't emit any light, any radiation, but it seems to have a gravitational effect.
And so it was then kind of the search for, well, what could this matter be? And people theorize, oh, is it just very, very thin stars? Some people kind of thinking, oh, is it kind of very tiny black holes and things like that? All different sorts of theories put forward.
I mean, at the moment, the current research predicts that or thinks that dark matter is a, I don't know how else to put it besides a strange, what physicists might call an exotic form of matter.
Well, Alex, one of the things that we were hoping to talk to you about today is a, I kind of, it took me a while to process this when I first read it and started thinking about this episode.
But so I think on NASA's website, it actually says that the universe is made up of three components.
Normal or visible matter is 5%.
So essentially 5% of what we can see and interact with, there appears to be another 95% that we just don't even really understand what it is.
I mean, is that true? And I guess in maybe just sort of simple terms, how can we think about dark matter, dark energy? What is that? How
do we understand that? So I think, yeah, the latest, as far as I'm aware, kind of the latest current theories are saying that is still, that is correct.
It is kind of, it stems from, I mean, I can take each one in turn and say dark matter, for example, that it stems from But both dark matter and dark energy stem from strange observations that were made.
So dark matter, for example, I guess in the 20th century, various astronomers, they found very strange measurements in the observations of galaxies or clusters of galaxies.
the orbital speed of stars as a distance from the center of that particular galaxy they were measuring.
And they found they'd expect, like with the solar system, the planets on the edge orbit slower.
So they expected to find that under classical mechanics and from what they could see, that the stars on the outskirts of the galaxy would orbit slower than the stars near the center.
But they found that stars on the outskirts were orbiting just as fast as stars near the center, which can only happen if there's a lot more matter, a lot more mass in that galaxy, more than what they could see.
And they saw a similar thing with clusters of galaxies orbiting inside those structures.
It doesn't emit any light, any radiation, but it seems to have a gravitational effect.
And so it was then kind of the search for, well, what could this matter be? And people theorize, oh, is it just very, very thin stars? Some people kind of thinking, oh, is it kind of very tiny black holes and things like that? All different sorts of theories put forward.
I mean, at the moment, the current research predicts that or thinks that dark matter is a, I don't know how else to put it besides a strange, what physicists might call an exotic form of matter.
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