Our Galaxy is being pushed by a 'dead zone' – these are the conclusions reached by cosmologist Yehuda Hoffman of the Hebrew University in Israel and his team, when they built a new 3D map of nearby galaxies and designated the so-called 'dead zone', also known as the 'Great Repeller' .
This movement, as shown by observations in the 90s and 2000s, was associated with the so-called 'Great Attractor' – potentially the largest object in the Universe, a giant cluster of galaxies centered in the galaxy cluster Abell 3627. It extends over almost half of the sky in the southern hemisphere and is located 150 million light years from Earth.
It is believed that our planet revolves around the Sun at a speed of about 100,000 km / h and something is causing the Milky Way to move through the universe at a speed of more than 2 million km / h – 630 km per second. In a new study, scientists explain why this is happening.
Hoffman discovered that there are dense superclusters of galaxies that are about 650 million light-years from Earth, the so-called Shapley concentration, and the Milky Way is pulling there. At the same time, behind our Galaxy, scientists have found evidence of a previously unknown region of outer space that is almost completely devoid of galaxies and it pushes us away with incredible force.
This mysterious structure, according to the calculations of Hoffman and his colleagues, pushes the Milky Way with the same force with which it is pulled by the 'Great Attractor' and the Shapley cluster, due to which our Galaxy and all members of the local group of galaxies move faster than the distances between them as a result of the expansion of the universe under the influence of dark energy.
Scientists believe that this structure may be associated with the void between the threads of the giant 'cosmic web of the Universe' – a network of umbilical cords of dark matter that unites all galaxies and groups of galaxies. Its study will help to understand how often such 'repellents' are found in the universe and how they affect the life and birth of galaxies.
Sources: sciencealert
