Infosphere:Featured article for fortnight 3 of 2012

Dark matter is a substance that was widely used as starship fuel in the 30th and 31st centuries. A pound of it weighs over ten thousand pounds. Dark matter has existed in the form of a ball of no more than one inch in radius, which is excreted by the Nibblonians, and oil. The only place where dark matter has been known to be mined was the planet Vergon 6, now destroyed. It was completely filled with the heavy substance and imploded due to the lack of support for the surface after it was mined hollow (1ACV04). Dark matter was useless until 2970, when, while smashing some in a particle accelerator, Professor Farnsworth accidentally created a single non-local metaparticle and an anti-backwards crystal. Spacecraft fuelled by dark matter were fairly common until 3008, as proven by the availability of dark-matter fuel at orbital filling stations. In that year, when dark-matter prices started to rise due to a supposed shortage, the professor set out to render dark matter useless again and to ruin Mom's fortune with the anti-backwards crystal, which Mom technically stole from him along with the single non-local metaparticle. The two crystals were destroyed and all dark matter became useless once more.