125
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by aCosmicWave@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

Is it at all possible that instead of being pushed away, we are instead getting pulled toward something huuuuuge via gravity? As if we are falling into something way greater than ourselves? I thought this was a wild idea but after I Googled it I found out that there is such a thing as a “Great Attractor”. Something 150 million light-years away is literally pulling all nearby galaxies towards it but no one knows exactly what it is.

So how do we know there aren’t any other Great Attractors, Greater Attractors, ad infinitum?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] person594@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago

Kind of a tangent at this point, but there is a very good reason that that couldn't be the case: according to the shell theorem , nowhere in the interior of a spherical shell of matter experiences any net gravitational force -- wherever you are inside the sphere, the forces counteract exactly.

Otherwise, though, the metric expansion of space is different from typical movement, and it isn't correct to say that things or being pushed or pulled. Rather, the distance between every pair of points in the universe increases over time, with that rate of increase proportional to the points' distance. Importantly, for very distant points, the distance can increse faster than the speed of light, which would be disallowed by any model which describes the expansion in terms of objects moving in a traditional sense.

this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
125 points (93.1% liked)

Asklemmy

43728 readers
1305 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS