Deleting certificates in Keychain Access???

I noticed in my Keychain Acess that I have a slew of certificates which (1) I'm not sure what their purpose really serves and (2) there's a ton of them with names I don't recognize and draws my suspicion.
What purpose do these certificates serve and what would happen if I deleted them?
And just to clarify: I'm not talking about my passwords, etc. in Keychain Access. I'm specifically referring to Certificates which I find by clicking on: System Roots and Certificates.
Thanks for any help.

If you delete a certificate, the source that gave you the certificate will just offer another one when you authenticate. Certificates are just a way for encrypted connections to establish identity between a client and server. The server will digitally sign a certificate that contains a public key as well as some personal information that's used by the service you're connecting to. Certificates are provided by the service, and can have expiration dates and such.
Cookies are similar in ways, but they arent as versatile and secure. They're generally used to let your browser keep track of when you last visited a site, perhaps contain a password for the site, and other user settings for a site. Certificates are mainly used for authorizing access to a service.

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