What are the fundamental constituents of Dark Energy?
Can we quantize dark energy in the first place, if it is a kind of Energy?
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4$\begingroup$ I think this is an open question in cosmology, so I'm not sure it's a good fit here. $\endgroup$– called2voyage ♦Commented Aug 24, 2020 at 18:04
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3$\begingroup$ I feel like this is too broad... $\endgroup$– TosicCommented Aug 24, 2020 at 18:12
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1$\begingroup$ No one knows. Cosmologists are unsure if it actually exists. $\endgroup$– MickCommented Aug 24, 2020 at 20:03
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2$\begingroup$ @JamesK - While related, that question is not a duplicate of this because it does not ask what dark energy is made of, and none of the answers address this issue. The correct answer to this question is that nobody with any expertise on the subject has the foggiest idea what dark energy is, but that is short and rude. $\endgroup$– David HammenCommented Aug 24, 2020 at 22:06
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2$\begingroup$ I'm voting to leave this question open. As DavidHammen notes, it's not an exact duplicate of the other question, and the answer by @uhoh provides a good overview of why a definitive answer to this present question isn't (currently) possible. The whole purpose of Stack Exchange is to provide a library of answers to every question, so closing this one would seem to defeat the overall purpose. $\endgroup$– Chappo Hasn't ForgottenCommented Aug 25, 2020 at 5:56
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1 Answer
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I have it on good authority that:
...nobody with any expertise on the subject has the foggiest idea what dark energy is...
This is confirmed in the beginning of Wikipedia's Dark energy which says:
In physical cosmology and astronomy, dark energy is an unknown form of energy that affects the universe on the largest scales.
and
The density of dark energy is very low (~7×10−30 g/cm3), much less than the density of ordinary matter or dark matter within galaxies. However, it dominates the mass–energy of the universe because it is uniform across space.
While dark matter is at least "clumpy" in that it's localization near blobs of "normal" matter like galaxies can be demonstrated by mapping the movements of stars responding to it's gravitational effects and there is some theoretical basis for particles that interact so weakly with "normal matter" that dark matter could be almost but not quite undetectable, dark energy on the other hand is not much more than the name given to whatever causes an observed acceleration at very very large distance scales:
The first observational evidence for its existence came from supernovae measurements, which showed that the universe does not expand at a constant rate; rather, the expansion of the universe is accelerating.
and
Without introducing a new form of energy, there was no way to explain how an accelerating universe could be measured. Since the 1990s, dark energy has been the most accepted premise to account for the accelerated expansion. As of 2020, there are active areas of cosmology research aimed at understanding the fundamental nature of dark energy.
There certainly may be a variety of theoretical discussions of how it might be explained, but to your question
What is dark energy made of?
The answer is still:
...nobody with any expertise on the subject has the foggiest idea what dark energy is...
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1$\begingroup$ Or to be unnecessarily recursive, it's made of dark energy. $\endgroup$– user24157Commented Aug 25, 2020 at 8:55