Question: Will we ever find dark matter and if so, what will we use it for?

Edward Bovill answered on 14 Mar 2013:

Dark matter is a problem for physicists at the moment. The most current version of our theories of how the universe works has a big problem with it. It predicts that there should be a LOT more mass in the universe than we can see. If it exists, dark matter would make up 84% of the mass of the universe.

Unfortunately, dark matter cannot be seen directly with telescopes – this is because it neither emits nor absorbs light or other electromagnetic radiation at any significant level. This makes is a really, really difficult type of mass to detect. We also have no idea what form the dark matter is. It could be a lot of dead remnant of stars that are no longer shining (called brown dwarf stars) or more complicated things like W.I.M.Ps. (weakly interacting massive particles). As we have no idea what dark matter is and no-one has ever detected it, we have no idea what uses, if any, it would have!