Science news: Strange new particle ‘alters future of universe moment by moment’

Beyond that, scientists have no idea. Another seemingly intractable question is that depending on your perspective on the universe, everything else seems to be moving away from you.

Here on Earth, it looks as if all the other galaxies are moving away from us as if we are the centre of the universe.

However, if you were on a planet in the Andromeda galaxy – the Milky Way’s much larger next door neighbour –it would seem that everything is moving away from you, and that would be the centre of the universe, to you at least.

This expansion is linked to something known – or indeed not known – as dark energy.

What exactly dark energy is has kept scientists stumped since it was theorised in 1980 as a sort of anti-gravity, pushing galaxies farther and farther away from each other.