LMR-067 · Galaxies
Cosmic Web
Galaxies don't drift randomly. They live on filaments around vast empty voids.
§ A first look
§ Depths
Six ways into the same idea — from bedtime story to chalkboard. No order required.
L1 · Crayon
Told like a bedtime story.
For a curious 10-year-old. No jargon. Just a picture in your head.
If you zoom way, way out and look at where all the galaxies in the universe are, they are not sprinkled evenly like sugar on a plate. Instead, they line up in long stringy chains, with huge mostly-empty spaces between the chains. The whole pattern, on the very biggest scale we can see, looks like a 3D spider web — or honestly, the inside of a sponge. That largest pattern of all is called the cosmic web. It's the biggest thing we've ever mapped. The universe is, structurally speaking, kitchen scrubber.
§ Strange but true
- 01Galaxies aren't scattered — they hang on invisible filaments of dark matter, forming a web that spans the universe.
- 02The largest single structure we've mapped is a wall of galaxies 10 billion light-years long.
- 03Between the strands sit vast voids — emptier than empty. The Boötes Void is 330 million light-years of almost nothing.
§ From the field journal
Cosmic Web
"Galaxies don't drift randomly. They live on filaments around vast empty voids."
— observed, sketched, not yet fully understood.
§ Nearby