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A .bib file is a plain text database of bibliographic references. Each entry has a type (article, book, inproceedings), a citation key, and structured fields (author, title, year, journal). LaTeX's `\cite{}` command references these keys, and BibTeX or Biber automatically formats the citations and generates the bibliography in whatever style the journal requires.
The format is elegant in its simplicity. One .bib file can serve an entire research career — accumulate references as you read papers, cite them across multiple documents, and change citation styles by swapping a single line in your LaTeX preamble. No manual formatting of references, ever.
Google Scholar, DBLP, and most academic databases export citations in BibTeX format directly. Copy the BibTeX entry, paste it into your .bib file, cite the key in your paper. Reference managers like Zotero and Mendeley maintain .bib files automatically and sync them across devices.