The Cosmic Web begins with modern pioneers of extragalactic astronomy such as Edwin Hubble and
Fritz Zwicky. It goes on to describe how during the Cold War the American school of cosmology
favored a model of the universe where galaxies resided in isolated clusters whereas the Soviet
school favored a honeycomb pattern of galaxies punctuated by giant isolated voids. Gott tells
the stories of how his own path to a solution began with a high-school science project when he
was eighteen and how he and astronomer Mario Juric measured the Sloan Great Wall of Galaxies
a filament of galaxies that at 1.37 billion light-years in length is one of the largest
structures in the universe.
