eight months ago a nifty little satellite called the wilkinson microwave anisotropy probe sent home a picture. the picture was of the cosmic microwave background 380,000 years after the big bang, that is to say the radiation present in the universe before there were any stars. and though you’d never know it to see it, this picture is big shit to a lot of smart people. why?

well, for one the data present allowed some of said smart people to calculate the age of the universe within a 1% margin of error. (the universe is 13.7 billion years old give or take a couple hundred million years, in case you were wondering). more interesting, though equally abstract, is the fact that according to the findings in this photo, space is indeed flat, not curved, not soccer ball shaped, and it will continue to expand indefinitely.
now the part most relevant to you and i- of all this old, flat, expanding space, every THING (which is to say anything made up of particles or measurable energy, including planets, moons, mysterious obelisks, suns, asteroids, comets, ejected dilythium crystals, quasars, neutrinos, death stars, space dust, jump-gates, and, of course all life) accounts for only… drum roll please… 4% of the total. yes indeedy. 4%. soak it up. the rest is made up of 23 percent dark matter, and 73 percent dark energy.
obviously we’ve “known” for a long time that the universe was made up mostly of dark stuff, meaning stuff we could not see, but now we have nice neat percentages to gawk at. the “we are so small in the scheme of things” factor is reinforced mathematically, but that’s not the real beauty of these numbers as i see it. in that we know almost nothing about dark matter and dark energy the data from this photograph really helps provide an accurate calculation of just how much we DON’T know. 96% at the very least. very nonist findings.
anyhow, if you’d like to read more about the WMAP and the implications of it’s data try here, and here. enjoy.