Arjun Dey

The early universe was a hot soup of particles and light. In this soup, sound waves, fluctuations in density, spread outward from clumps of matter like ripples on a pond. When the universe cooled, these waves froze, leaving an imprint in the distribution of galaxies: they are slightly more abundant at a certain distance from each other.

A distant lamp shines through uneven glass. The glass bends the rays, and instead of one flame on the wall, several appear — some brighter, some fainter. In much the same way, a massive galaxy bends the light of an exploded star. There was one explosion, but the images show four glowing points.