Thanks, but I need a little more

I read the definition of Domain Keys in te cpanel thing and elsewhere ... but I don't know what it means. "DomainKeys is an e-mail authentication system designed to verify the DNS domain of an e-mail sender and the message integrity." I would like a bit more complete explanation of what that means and what it does. I am a little tech savvy so I would like a bit more meat
Same thing with SPF. I understand that it "allows software to identify and reject forged addresses in the SMTP MAIL FROM (Return-Path)," but again, what does that mean exactly?
What actually occurs when these things are enabled?