Calay News
In school, we used to build models of the solar system, where we depicted the planets revolving around a static golden star. However, astronomers have discovered that our solar system, along with the Milky Way and our galaxy, is traveling through the universe at an astonishing speed of 600 kilometers per second.
This journey has a destination, and since the 1970s, astronomers have identified a “great force” called the “Great Attractor,” which is the source of the origin of this motion. According to experts, our galaxy is heading towards something we cannot see clearly, and the focal point of this motion is the Great Attractor, the result of billions of years of cosmic evolution.
Despite the impressive speed of our galaxy, it is unlikely to reach its destination because of dark energy, a mysterious force that accelerates the expansion of the universe. Over time, galaxies will move farther and farther away from each other, and the structure of the universe as we know it will be destroyed in billions of years.
The discovery of the Great Attractor was made by studying the motion of our solar system and comparing it to that of other nearby galaxies. Astronomers noticed a vague direction in addition to the expansive motion, indicating that all nearby galaxies were also heading toward the same focal point. Through technological advances, it was determined that the Great Attractor is a dark matter structure located in the supercluster of galaxies called Laniakea with the ability to attract galaxies within approximately 300 million light-years.
Although the Large Attractor remains a mystery due to its location on the opposite side of our galaxy and the cosmic noise that makes it difficult to observe, it has been established that it is not a black hole but a gravitational anomaly. Understanding these structures helps us understand the organization of the universe and its interaction with other forces such as light and gravity.
In addition, the study of the Large Attractor gives us information about the future of our space environment. However, dark energy, which acts in the opposite direction to gravity, will eventually affect this journey and will probably result in the destruction of everything we know. Although we know the fate of our galaxy, it is likely that the Earth or our solar system will not get to witness it.
