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Do cosmologists know for sure that the Big Bang is propelling all matter away? (lemm.ee)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by aCosmicWave@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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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?

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[–] hactar42@lemmy.world 20 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I saw a really good demonstration of this once, but I can't seem to find a video of it.

Basically imagine a rubber tube with 4 balls equal distance apart from each other.

--0--0--0--0--

If you stretch the tube from both ends all of the balls move an equal distance apart.

----0----0----0----0----

There is no one ball that is the center or the starting point. However if you focus on one ball while stretching it will seem like the others are moving away from it. But in reality they are all moving away from each other at the same rate.

[–] Hadriscus@lemm.ee 6 points 11 months ago

That's a excellent picture

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 11 months ago

And as far as we know, the tube is a loop or infinite, so it doesn't even have a center itself.