@TheoryJester,
I still interested in your 3% Krumple?
I am referencing the make up of the universe. Matter, the stuff that is stars, dust, gas, planets, you and I constitutes only 3% of what the universe is. I refer to this as "residue". I have tried to come up with a smaller model analogy to put it into focus.
If you had a football stadium that was empty, just a volume of void, not even energy, it pretty much is nothing. However; there is a tiny speck of dust floating in this empty stadium. That is pretty much the equivalent of ALL the matter that we see, are made of and consider important. All the hydrogen and molecules are contained within that tiny spec of dust floating in this vast void.
Now not to confuse you, because space is not empty nor void. It contains energy, so I am including all this energy into that tiny speck of dust as well. So essentially matter is just soot of sorts from an event that happened. Perhaps a byproduct that results from the formation of the universe.
The problem is since we are made up of this stuff we assume that it is in some way important to the universe or that if there was a cause or purpose behind the universes formation this amount of matter seems to be inadequate for such a massive waste of space.
When we mapped the locations of the galaxies on a large scale we noticed that there are regions of space that are completely devoid of matter, they don't even contain dust or gas because the gravitational influences of the galaxies have pulled all the gas towards them leaving void pockets. These pockets of empty space are hundreds of millions of light years in diameter. Which is very difficult to fully grasp or take in.
I guess ultimately the point I am getting to is the universe is mostly nothing, absent of energy.