Beyond our own Milky Way and the adjoining cluster of “locals” we see a wondrous variety of different shapes and aggregations of galaxies amounting themselves now to possibly hundred billions or more of such vast star-populations.
And with the advances in microwave astronomy, we now have reached back to about 300,000 years immediately after the Big Bang of the creation of our universe. Click the image above to view a video of the evolution of the universe!
 Yet, the more we learn and observe, the more we realize how little we as yet comprehend—at best we observe and explain 5% of our universe. The rest is “Dark Matter” (about 25% of indicated mass) and - by far the largest component – is “Dark Energy”, the force that seems to “pull apart” our universe at ever increasing speeds. We infer such forces through our observations of their effect, yet we do not “see” these massive objects or forces. We can say by now that we comprehend but 5% of what we see. All the rest is speculation – as of now. (click image of black hole to enlarge)
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