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ZachKessin
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Philosopher no they are not. Black holes are places in the universe where gravity has caused matter to fall in on itself and you get an area of extreme gravity. We see small size black holes (3-10 times the mass of the sun) around the galaxy. These are the remains of very large stars that have died. (We can see them because sometimes they are in a binary with another star and we can see that star moving). In the center of galaxies you get very large black holes, in our galaxy the black hole is about 3million solar masses but in some other galaxies they can get into the billions of solar masses. How these form is not known and an area of active research.

Dark Matter is the name given to the fact that the mass of galaxies is 95% unseen. When you measure the orbits of stars and gas clouds in galaxies you find that what you can see is only a very small percent of the mass that would be required to make things orbit. In addition the dark matter seems to extend a great distance past the point where the visible stuff runs out.

So far we don’t exactly know what Dark matter is, we do know a bunch of things that it isn’t, but the exact nature of Dark Matter is still unknown.

Dark Energy is the term for whatever is driving the universe to not only expand but to expand *FASTER* over time. It would be like if you threw a ball up in the air and instead of falling back down it would rocket off into space.

As for what Dark Energy is, well to be honest we have no clue. We know something is going on, we can see that the effect is real. But we don’t understand why.