Elegant Wiggles: Why the Universe Is Lumpy

Back in January the Edge (the website, not the guitarist) posted almost 200 short essays in response to the question, "What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?"

Right away I knew what my favorite candidate would be: the prevailing explanation for why the universe is lumpy. The explanation combines two of the most interesting and consequential ideas of modern physics: Heisenberg's uncertainty principle from quantum theory, and the separate idea, stemming from Einstein's general relativity, that space and time are as malleable as a trampoline. Even better, the explanation for the lumps leads to predictions for specific features that should be observable in the universe today -- predictions that match the latest data so closely it's almost uncanny. [The Huffington Post, 05.22.12]