if you think you matter, don't hold your breath

I am talking about the universe, or rather the shadow universe, the dark universe that, in fact, is pretty much the universe.
It’s the darkness that matters.
Astronomers infer a universe using the laws of physics. There are four known forces in the universe that move matter and energy; they are gravity, electromagnetism and two forms of nuclear force. Out of these four, gravity plays the biggest role in the momentum of the universe’s expansion and/or contraction.
Now, based on new findings on the motion of the universe as a whole, scientists have been forced to infer the presence of new forms of energy and matter that are undetectable. They call them “dark matter” and “dark energy”, and their sum constitutes the “dark universe”. dark matter and dark energy represent about 95 per cent of the total universe. That means the kind of energy and matter that we know, the things we see, touch and experience every day, account for merely about 1/20th of the cosmos.
Besides sharing the evocative “dark” adjective, dark matter has nothing to do with dark energy, and vice versa. The term “dark” is used by astrophysicists to mean something that we can only see (in a broader sense of the word) in its effect, but never the cause.
In other words, they are nothing, and at the same time, everything.
Dark matter is a form of mass (or particles) that does not emit or absorb light. Dark energy is cosmic filler capable of doing work that is “invisible”. Dark matter and dark energy were “discovered” in different ways. They, individually, and combined, represent the definition of “mysterious”.
Until about thirty years ago, astronomers thought of the universe as comprising only of “baryonic matter” – namely protons, neutrons and electrons. Everything we see and touch, including the air we breathe, and the distant stars we observe – together known as our universe – was entirely composed of this baryonic matter.
In the last few decades, however, there has been more evidence that there is something else that we cannot see in the universe, but which is a critical part of it. Astronomers called it “non-baryonic matter” or dark matter. It exerts a gravitational effect, a strong negative pressure, that makes our flat universe expand, rather than shrink, and expand faster in reality than it should theoretically.
The hotly debated, dual, possible ultimate fate for the universe – whether it’s the “Big Chill” or the “Big Crunch” – now seems to have tilted towards the likelihood of the former and not the latter. The universe will slowly cool as it expands, until eventually it is unable to sustain any life.
Dark energy makes up a large majority of the total content of the universe. It is now viewed as a cosmological constant that explains the rate of expansion of our cosmos. A cosmological constant is the term originally proposed by Einstein as a mathematical fix to the theory of general relativity that supported his view that the universe was static. However, Einstein later was forced to admit that his cosmological constant and the static universe was his “greatest mistake”. Today, cosmologists associate Dark energy with the energy density of the vacuum that causes the universe’s expansion. 
The posit of Dark energy significantly improves the agreement between theory and observation.  Generically, the gravitational pull exerted by the matter in the universe, in theory, slows the expansion imparted by the Big Bang. However, the recent discovery of supernova, or very bright rare stars, clearly indicates that the universe is expanding, not contracting. It raises the possibility that the universe contains a bizarre form of matter or energy that is, in effect, gravitationally repulsive. 
Both dark matter and dark energy have been a tenet of man’s scientific quest. They are so elusive that physicists quip they can only be compared to divinity.  The sub-atomic Higgs Boson particle that is fundamental to understanding the true nature of matter – the dark matter – is known as the “God particle”. This dark matter is one of the primary motivations for building “supercolliders” to produce it in the laboratory.
For those of us who feel numbed by the insanity of politics and the decadent state of social affairs everywhere we look, this is a reprieve. It is not that the universe is big and we are small, and thus we are robbed of our significance. Given the posit of a dark universe comprising predominantly dark matter and dark energy, we are in fact barely part of the universe.
So, when all is said and done, with the new scientific discoveries, and everything around you makes little or no sense, we may be better off … just breathing.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

(Robert Frost; “Fire and Ice”; published December 1920.)