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Mysterious Force Pulling A cluster of galaxies
Mysterious Force Pulling A cluster of galaxies
Australian astronomers have spotted a cluster of galaxies being pulled in by a mysterious force. A STRANGE intergalactic force is drawing our Milky Way galaxy inward. We don’t know what, or why. But a hidden swarm of hundreds of nearby galaxies just discovered by Australian astronomers may help reveal the identity of the ‘Great Attractor’. This pack of galaxies has been spotted by astronomers using CSIRO’s Parkes Observatory in NSW. The international study involved researchers from Australia, South Africa, the US and the Netherlands, and was published today in Astronomical Journal. Despite being ‘just next door’ in astronomical terms — a mere 250 million light years away — these galaxies have remained hidden from view because they are on the opposite side of our own. The intensity of stars and dust crowded together along the plane of the Milky Way is directly in the line of sight — masking everything behind it from view. That something must be there has been known for some time. Its immense gravitational pull — the equivalent of a million billion Suns — has been observed through calculations of strange deviations in the flight path of nearby galaxies. And our own. In the absence of any indication as to what it may be, astronomers have simply dubbed it the ‘Great Attractor’. Our Milky Way is just one of hundreds of thousands of local galaxies ensnared by its grasp. And we’re hurtling towards the mysterious source of this attraction force at more than two million kilometres per hour.
