The Dark Side of the Universe: Cosmic mysteries and their histories

Everything we’ve ever experienced - every person, every planet and every star - is made up of atoms, and all of them together represent less than five percent of the universe.

Everything else is dark - dark energy or dark matter.

Dark energy seems to be responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe, stretching space. Dark matter may be providing the gravitational attraction needed to hold our universe in a fine structure, allowing us to exist.

University of Queensland astrophysicist Samuel Hinton - back from his sojourn as a contestant on Australian Survivor - will present the cosmic history of the universe, exploring the dark side of the universe and offering hypotheses for what dark energy and dark matter could be, and how these ideas could be tested.

Watch the recording

Recording of "The Dark Side of the Universe" talk(YouTube, 57m)

Meet the presenter

Samuel Hinton is an award-winning astrophysicist, robotics and software engineer, astronomer, cat enthusiast and education advocate, who loves sharing his passion for science and space. Recently he competed on Australian Survivor as a ‘champions’ contestant and at 26, he is one of the few people in the world tackling the largest mysteries of the universe – the hunt for dark energy and dark matter. Samuel will be sharing his research on how exploding stars may constrain the nature of dark energy.