t3knomanser: Let's go back over it. Again.

We have a set of observations. From galaxies spinning faster than their mass should allow them, to gravitational lensing where there's nothing visible providing lenses, to even the shape and distribution of the early universe moments after the Big Bang: there's something creating more gravity than can be accounted for by the mass we can observe.

That's dark matter. Dark matter is the term for the whatever which causes more gravity than should rightfully be observed. There is, 100%, something. The details and nature of it are what is subject to debate. WIMPs are the current favorite- particles that create gravity but otherwise only interact with the weak force- because their predicted properties most closely fit the observed behavior, and they slot awkwardly into the Standard Model of particle physics- awkward in a way that hints at new physics, which is great because the Standard Model is frustratingly accurate about its predictions but also doesn't predict a lot of things we'd really like it to.

Importantly, Dark Matter has no connection whatsoever to Dark Energy, which again, is rooted in an observation: the expansion of the universe is accelerating the farther away you go. Things don't accelerate for no reason, so something must be causing it. Hence, Dark Energy. Again, this is a thing that definitely is happening, and the question is "but why?"

t3knomanser: Concrete Donkey: We cannot say that dark energy has no relation to dark matter until we figure out what each one actually is.


Which we probably wont be able to do until we figure out how to see higher dimensional objects

Well, let me rephrase: we have no reason to think they're connected.

And we can see and measure higher dimensional objects- one of the best candidates for dark energy would be the curvature of spacetime itself in a higher dimension. While we haven't entirely eliminated that possibility, the measurements we have taken make it very unlikely.