Gravitational critical phenomena in the realm of the galaxies and Ising magnets

In the non-relativistic and quasi-static limit, it is possible to map exactly the system of galaxies in the observable universe onto an Ising magnet. Techniques from the theory of critical phenomena as applied to magnets can then be employed to calculate rigorously the galaxy-to-galaxy correlation function, whose critical exponent is predicted to be between 1.530 to 1.862, to be compared to the empirical/observational value of 1.6 to 1.8.This essay received the fifth award from the Gravity Research Foundation, 1996—Ed.