The Wide Angle: TOP 10 THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT DARK ENERGY

This top 10 is part of our in-depth look at how astronomers have caught dark energy in the act of slowing down the universe's development. For much, much more of our series The Wide Angle, click around in the box to your right: "More of the Wide Angle"

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Dark energy is the biggest mystery in the cosmos, pervading the vast emptiness of space for billions of light-years. But if you thought you knew everything there was to know about this strange force, think again.

Discovery Space sat down with Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago, to pin down the 10 biggest things you didn't know about dark energy.

10. Dark Energy's Discoverer Didn't Coin the Term

Who came up with the term? "I did," Turner said. "That's because when you find something new and weird, you have to name it. It can't just be 'the funny stuff that helps the universe speed up.'"

The term is also used to say that it's different than dark matter, which is yet another weird constituent of the cosmos, and behaves more like energy than anything else that we know of.

Photo Credit: Millennium Simulation Project