Galaxy filament

A galaxy filament is an elongated concentration of galaxies, gas, and dark matter that forms a strand of the cosmic web, linking denser structures across vast distances.

Cosmic web: The large-scale network of matter in the universe, organized into filaments, sheets, and voids. Filaments are the threadlike strands in this broader matter network.
Galaxy cluster: A gravitationally bound association of hundreds to thousands of galaxies and their surrounding hot gas and dark matter. Clusters commonly occupy the dense nodes where several filaments meet.
Cosmic accretion: The inflow of matter from a galaxy's surroundings that supports its growth and activity. Filamentary flows can deliver gas and dark matter toward galaxies.
Sloan Great Wall: A vast concentration of galaxies identified in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Its interconnected galaxy structures illustrate the scale of large cosmic filaments and walls.
Warm–hot intergalactic medium: Diffuse intergalactic gas heated to roughly 100,000–10 million kelvin, much of it difficult to detect. Its predicted abundance in filaments remains challenging to measure observationally.
Gravitational instability: The growth of density differences as gravity draws matter toward regions that are already denser. It amplifies primordial density variations into the structures that become filaments.
Cosmic void: A vast region of space with substantially lower matter density than the cosmic average. Voids are the underdense spaces between the web's filaments and sheets.
Cold mode accretion: A proposed mode of galaxy growth in which relatively cool gas streams into galaxies without first becoming very hot. Narrow filaments can carry cool gas toward galaxies, especially in the early universe.
BOSS Great Wall: A large-scale galaxy structure identified in data from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey. It is a prominent observed example of galaxies arranged in an extensive cosmic structure.
Cosmic web stripping: The removal of gas from a galaxy as it moves through diffuse material in the cosmic web. Its strength and importance for galaxy evolution depend on poorly constrained filament gas.

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