When you blow up a balloon too quickly, its surface starts to quiver. Something similar happened to space in the first moments after the Big Bang: the universe expanded rapidly, and the very fabric of space began to ripple. This ripple, gravitational waves, doesn't just travel through the cosmos; it can also interfere with the birth of tiny black holes.

Normally, such holes could form when an especially dense clump of energy randomly appeared in the expanding universe. But calculations show that the jitters of space act like a headwind. They slow down the expansion right where a clump is trying to become a hole. The process resembles a self-regulating system: the stronger the expansion in a region, the more powerful the counter-wave that reins it in.

This effect changes the game for theorists. Previously, to get the right number of black holes, you had to fine-tune the expansion parameters very precisely, like tuning a radio, where the slightest turn of the dial takes you off the station. Now, nature itself turns the dial back, smoothing out the peaks. The fine-tuning that seemed suspicious becomes much less critical.