The Great Attractor: What Pulls the Cosmic Map Toward the Blind Spot?

There is a direction on the sky map where the Milky Way leaves us nearly blind. Dust, gas, and the countless stars of our own galaxy form a screen, making galaxies behind it difficult to see in ordinary light. When astronomers measured the peculiar velocities of nearby galaxies, they found many systems were not simply moving with cosmic expansion. They also had a drift, like water flowing toward a region near that...

There is a direction on the sky map where the Milky Way leaves us nearly blind. Dust, gas, and the countless stars of our own galaxy form a screen, making galaxies behind it difficult to see in ordinary light. When astronomers measured the peculiar velocities of nearby galaxies, they found many systems were not simply moving with cosmic expansion. They also had a drift, like water flowing toward a region near that...

There is a direction on the sky map where the Milky Way leaves us nearly blind. Dust, gas, and the countless stars of our own galaxy form a screen, making galaxies behind it difficult to see in ordinary light. When astronomers measured the peculiar velocities of nearby galaxies, they found many systems were not simply moving with cosmic expansion. They also had a drift, like water flowing toward a region near that...

There is a direction on the sky map where the Milky Way leaves us nearly blind. Dust, gas, and the countless stars of our own galaxy form a screen, making galaxies behind it difficult to see in ordinary light. When astronomers measured the peculiar velocities of nearby galaxies, they found many systems were not simply moving with cosmic expansion. They also had a drift, like water flowing toward a region near that...