What powers the Universe? Probably an easier question to speculate about than what is the Universe. The conclusion of the cosmic background radiation thing had astronomers and astrophysicists and cosmologists (but not my cosmetologist) doing a collective Snoopy dance. Not that I get it get it, but I kind of get it. Then we hit up a few Ia supernovae and whoom, red shift happens. A lotof red shift happens. And after a few triple checked figures, we're finding out that stuff is a lot farther away than it was supposed to be.

We know that there's a lot of stuff out there, dark matter, that we can't really see. No big news there. Dark energy is way cool, th0ugh. They think that it's the stuff doing the cosmic anti-gravity thing. Gravity should actually be making the universe collapse. As more supernovae and other assorted big booms happen, heavier metals get formed, collide, and turn into stuff like planets. And mass sucks in mass sucks in mass. Theythink the Universe did the Big Bang, really expanded, then the expansion sort of slowed down and went at a relatively constant rate until red shift happened a little too much. Now they're trying to figure out what's powering the outgo or, more specifically, how Dark Energy is powering the outgo.