Have you ever wondered what lies beyond our galaxy? Well, NASA has just made an incredible discovery that will blow your mind! They have found an unknown force that is pulling everything towards it, including our own Milky Way. But that’s not all, because scientists may have just uncovered something even bigger and more mysterious!
The Great Attractor is a massive and enigmatic entity that sits deep in the universe’s zone of avoidance. This area is obscured by the Milky Way’s disk, which makes it challenging to observe from Earth. However, with advancements in X-ray and radio astronomy, scientists have been able to study this region and found something incredible.
The Great Attractor has an estimated diameter of 300 million light-years, and its center is approximately 147 million light-years away from Earth. It is located at the center of the Laniakea Supercluster, which our Milky Way and neighboring Andromeda galaxy are moving towards.
Scientists have also discovered a supercluster of galaxies known as the Norma Cluster in this region, with a total mass estimated to be about 1,000 trillion solar masses. But what is most intriguing is that there are far fewer galaxies in the Great Attractor region than previously thought.
It turns out that the Malmquist bias was responsible for this phenomenon. In space, the further away an object is, the more likely it is too dim to detect. Therefore, only the brightest objects can be seen. This effect led scientists to believe that the Great Attractor had over 10 million billion times the mass of the sun.
However, further research revealed that its mass was only one-tenth of the initial estimate. The Great Attractor may, in many ways, be a mirage showing us something that doesn’t exist. It may not be a super attractor at all, but just a section of space where there are more galaxies than usual.
So, what is causing local clusters of galaxies to move towards the center of the Laniakea Supercluster? Well, scientists found their answer in the Shapley Supercluster, a collection of approximately 20 clusters consisting of 8,000 galaxies about 650 million light-years from Earth. This supercluster encompasses ten million billion solar masses, making it the most massive formation within a billion light-years from the Milky Way.
The Dipole Repeller is another exciting discovery in the opposite direction from the Shapley Supercluster. This region of extremely low density pushes matter away due to its underdense nature. It is likely devoid of matter, making it an excellent area for scientists to study dark matter and energy.
The universe is vast and mysterious, and NASA’s discovery of the unknown force pulling galaxies is a reminder of how much we still have to learn. Who knows what other incredible discoveries await us? One thing is for sure; it will leave us speechless.
