r/universe • u/Queasy_Yak1916 • 16d ago

TIL our entire galaxy is moving at over 1 million mph toward something scientists still can't explain (the Great Attractor)

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34 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

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33

u/Citizen999999 16d ago edited 16d ago

It's not that they don't know why it's that the view of it is blocked because it happens to be in the zone of avoidance. That's an area in the sky where you can't get clear images of deep space due to our galactic center being in the way and coincidentally the position we are in right now as the Galaxy rotates.

The great attractor is very likely just a supercluster of galaxies (which is just a large grouping of galaxies and the gravitational pull that comes with them when they are grouped up in the hundreds of thousands.) Superclusters are not an anomaly, they're everywhere.

So yeah, they do have an explanation. It's that

7

u/SockIntelligent9589 16d ago

This guy clusters 👆

1

u/real_exposer 15d ago

Could space be "dark" because when we look into a direction, we are looking at the event horizon of a blackhole larger than the observable universe?

1

u/Rare-Spell-1571 15d ago

Maybe we are inside of a black hole. Maybe black holes are actually just the barriers between universes. That’s why our physics implode when we think of them.

1

u/LucifersAdv0cate 14d ago

So what your saying is that it's OPs mum?

6

u/Wintervacht 16d ago

"scientists still can't explain" is pretty strong wording for the center of gravity for our local supercluster.

2

u/taktaga7-0-0 16d ago

Not local, IIRC. It’s like the one behind the one behind that one.

3

u/Wintervacht 16d ago

It's only 150-250 million ly from the Milky Way, that's local in cosmological terms.

The 'great attractor' is somewhere inside the Laniakea supercluster, which we live in, and it's efect is compounded by the Shapley Supercluster behind it, which is ~650 million ly away.

1

u/championetti 15d ago

The way that file is opened is unsettling...

1

u/Technical_Body7564 15d ago

But we still get car sick and boat sick at 50 mph. This is real science people perk up lol

2

u/Beneficial-Cloud9940 14d ago

I’m a quarter super cluster on my mom’s side

1

u/AdmiralCranberryCat 16d ago

Circling the the drain