The cosmic web represents the Universe's most magnificent architectural framework—a vast three-dimensional scaffold of dark matter filaments stretching across billions of light-years, with galaxies strung along these cosmic highways like glittering beads. This intricate structure emerged from tiny quantum fluctuations in the early Universe, which gravity amplified over 13.8 billion years into today's web-like pattern of dense filaments separated by enormous voids spanning 100-400 million light-years across.</p><p>First predicted by Soviet cosmologist Yakov Zel'dovich in 1970 and confirmed through galaxy surveys like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the cosmic web reveals that ordinary matter comprises merely 5% of this structure, with dark matter (27%) and dark energy (68%) dominating the framework. Galaxy filaments contain roughly 1,000 times more matter than the nearly empty voids, where galaxies are rare and isolated.</p><p>Notable examples include the Sloan Great Wall, a filament stretching 1.4 billion light-years, and the Boötes Void, a cosmic bubble 330 million light-years wide containing virtually no galaxies. Our own Local Group, including the Milky Way, sits within a relatively modest filament. Understanding this cosmic architecture helps astronomers trace how structure formation shaped galaxy evolution, star formation rates, and the Universe's ultimate fate, making the cosmic web fundamental to modern cosmology.