Title: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Cosmic Web

Speaker: Prof. Aseem Paranjape, IUCAA Pune

Abstract: The Cosmic Web is an intricate network of galaxies, gas and dark matter spread throughout the Universe, showing a filamentary organisation at the largest scales imaginable. In the past two decades or so, large-volume observational surveys have provided unprecedented depth and detail into the properties of the Cosmic Web. Remarkably, the existence and origin of this fascinating structure was already predicted by very simple models of cosmological structure formation nearly 50 years ago. However, the full multi-scale glory of the Cosmic Web, and its role in shaping the formation and evolution of the galaxies and inter-galactic medium that inhabit it, remain challenging to understand even today. In this talk, I will describe our current theoretical and observational understanding of the Cosmic Web and discuss some open questions.