Topic: cosmic web

Most cosmic matter and energy remain unidentified, while galaxies trace a structured network of filaments, walls, voids and clusters. This seminar explains how that network emerges through hierarchical growth and how sky surveys reconstruct its changing distribution. Mapping the cosmic web connects observations of large-scale structure with the expansion and evolution of the Universe.

Inflation can convert primordial quantum fluctuations into the seeds of galaxies and the cosmic web. This seminar reviews that connection and its support from microwave-background observations. It then examines whether unusually large fluctuations could collapse into black holes in the early Universe, potentially supplying dark matter, and identifies unresolved questions in this account of primordial structure formation.