Janna Levin on Dark Matter

Dark matter is a mysterious, ethereal substance that makes up over 25 percent of the mass-energy of the universe (for comparison, the stuff we can see and interact with only comprises about 5 percent) but has only been measured obliquely by its effects on the matter around it. It is essentially invisible, and conceptual metaphors seem to be the method of choice for explaining what, exactly, dark matter is. Since our understanding of dark matter is in flux, and our measurements of dark matter are difficult to visualize, we thought that the most novel way to represent it would be to move away from the literal universe and into an animated one. ♦