Question: what is dark matter ,i know its really small but how is it made and can it be caught or seen?

Rebecca Boulton answered on 13 Mar 2026:

Imagine the universe is like a giant invisible playground. We can see the swings, the slides, and the kids playing (these are the stars, planets, and gas).
But the playground also has invisible ropes pulling things around. We can’t see the ropes, but we know they’re there because of how everything moves – the invisible ropes are dark matter.

Scientists still don’t know what dark matter is made from or how it is made. They think it is probably made from tiny pieces of stuff that don’t mix with light, but it isn’t made from atoms like everything else is.

Scientists haven’t caught dark matter yet, but they are trying to see it using special sensors underground that detect if dark matter bumps into them, and using giant telescopes to see how gravity bends things, kind of like watching if there is something invisible creating a shadow. Scientists are also trying to make dark matter using the large hadron collider, by smashing particles together really fast – maybe the particles that fly off will be dark matter