ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Quintessence: The Search for Missing Mass in the Universe

Have you ever wondered why the stars in the sky don’t just fly away? Well, there’s something that holds them in place – that’s gravity! Gravity is what keeps all the planets orbiting around the sun, and it’s what keeps the moon orbiting around the Earth. But scientists have noticed that there seems to be something missing in the universe that should be there to create enough gravity to hold everything together.

This missing thing is called “mass” – basically, it’s the stuff that everything is made of. Scientists have found that there’s not enough visible mass in the universe to account for everything we can see – there’s simply not enough to create enough gravity to hold everything in place. This is where quintessence comes in.

Quintessence is the name given to a theoretical form of energy that could be responsible for the missing mass in the universe. This energy is thought to be spread throughout the whole universe, and it would be invisible to us because we can’t see it or touch it.

Scientists are studying quintessence in order to try and figure out how it works and what it does. They believe that quintessence could be the key to unlocking the mystery of the missing mass in the universe.

In summary, quintessence is the name given to a theoretical form of energy that could be responsible for the missing mass in the universe. Scientists study it to try and figure out how it works and what it does, and hope that one day it will help them solve the mystery of why there seems to be not enough mass to account for the effects of gravity.