Reality

I don't understand any science.  Heck, I don't even know how light bulbs work.  But I rest secure in the knowledge that other people do know this stuff.  Or I used to.  Yesterday, I heard the newest Nobel laureate for physics, astrophysicist Adam Reiss, say that we -- by which he means "we Nobel scientists and MacArthur geniuses" -- understand only about 4 percent of the stuff that goes on in the universe.  4 percent!

I don't have a link to the radio show that I was listening to yesterday, but here's the gist of what he was saying:

Taken together, dark matter and dark energy seem to make up most of the mass of the universe (matter and energy are considered to be two forms of the same thing, thanks to Einstein's famous equation E=Mc^2). Dark energy is thought to account for 74 percent of the universe, while dark matter adds about 22 percent, and normal, visible matter contributes a puny 4 percent.

http://www.space.com/6619-dark-energy.html

In English, of course, "dark" matter and "dark" energy just mean "stuff we can't begin to understand."

UPDATE:  A short NASA article on dark energy and dark matter.  It's completely over my head, but a pleasure to read nonetheless.  For example:

But when physicists tried to calculate how much energy this would give empty space, the answer came out wrong - wrong by a lot. The number came out 10¹²⁰ times too big. That's a 1 with 120 zeros after it. It's hard to get an answer that bad. So the mystery continues.