The cosmic web: Geometric analysis

Abstract

The spatial cosmic matter distribution on scales of a few up to more than a hundred megaparsec displays a salient and pervasive foam-like pattern. Revealed through the painstaking efforts of redshift survey campaigns, it has completely revised our view of the matter distribution on these cosmological scales. The web-like spatial arrangement of galaxies and mass into elongated filaments, sheet-like walls and dense compact clusters, the existence of large near-empty void regions and the hierarchical nature of this mass distribution - marked by substructure over a wide range of scales and densities - are three major characteristics we have come to know as the cosmic web. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.