The best image ever taken of the cosmic web reveals the birthplace of galaxies

For the first time, astronomers have obtained large-scale images of the cosmic web — the incredibly ancient scaffolding of dark matter and hydrogen gas out of which galaxies in the Universe were formed.

This material is so far away and so incredibly faint that it took one of the largest telescopes in the world coupled with one of the most powerful cameras to see it at all. But what they found in their images was the very framework of the Universe.

The Universe formed about 13.8 billion years i...