Comment Re:Electric Universe (Score 1) 225
Dark energy is needed to explain the rapid inflation of the universe. Dark matter is matter we know is out there but can't yet identify because it so weakly interacts with normal matter. One is extremely important to explaining big bang cosmology as we currently understand it. The other in certainly is part of the big bang story, but is as much an interest to particle physicist as cosmologists because it represents the possibility of physics beyond the Standard Model.