An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics

The entire, large-scale structure of the → Universe in which → galaxy clusters are connected by → cosmic filaments (made up of → dark matter and → baryons)
in a spongelike geometry, while the low-density → voids are connected to each other by low-density tunnels. The term cosmic web was coined in 1996 by J. Richard Bond et al. (Nature, 380, 603).

See also: → cosmic; → web.