Come Forth! Dark Energy! Universal Repulsion! Formless and Invisible! Beyond All Reason! Stuns the Entire Venue!

What, exactly, powered the universe's accelerated expansion?

Inside the venue, everyone craned their necks in anticipation!

Li Qiwei smiled faintly and began:

"While I was downstairs just now, I spoke with Professor Hale, Professor Dyson, and the others."

"Everyone put forward some very interesting ideas."

"For instance, some believed that accelerated expansion was caused by Universal Gravitation."

"On small scales, Universal Gravitation manifests as attraction, but on large scales, it manifests as repulsion."

"The universe's accelerated expansion is driven by this repulsive force!"

Everyone's expressions immediately turned strange.

That idea had probably been proposed by Professor Hale.

After all, he had already taken a swing at Universal Gravitation earlier.

"But this view did not win the approval of all of us."

"There is one very simple question: where is the boundary between attraction and repulsion?"

"If Universal Gravitation truly has a Universal Repulsion side, then the question of that boundary has no solution."

"However, one aspect of this conjecture did win everyone's approval."

"That is, the cause of accelerated expansion must be the existence of some kind of repulsive force."

"And this repulsive force must exist independently."

"Because according to the Big Bang theory, the expansion of space is merely the aftermath of the explosion. It absolutely should not grow stronger and stronger."

"Therefore, some kind of [existence] must be at work."

"Clearly, we still cannot see this existence with the naked eye."

"So someone proposed: could Dark Matter be responsible?"

Whoosh!

Everyone's eyes lit up.

That was certainly a novel answer.

"However, that is impossible as well."

"Although Dark Matter participates in gravitational interactions, it produces attraction, not repulsion."

"Otherwise, the Milky Way and galaxy clusters would have fallen apart long ago, and large-scale structures could never have formed in the universe."

Everyone nodded.

They could not forget the