Astrophysics - The Great Attractor

[Lamp]

There's a region in space known as the Great Attactor

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap000104.html

Apparently the Milky Way - where we are - is being drawn into it.

Anyone with an applied understanding of astrophysics - is this a supermassive black hole ??

 

[MaCaBr3]

Ask Muse

 

[old.Tohtori]

If i answer yes and someone proves me wrong, can i still say that i was basing my answer on the current information available?

 

[fl3a]

i am known as the great attractor irl!

 

[Zegas]

The information there is very limited, I personally haven't heard of it afaik before, which is strange :|

I've studied some astrophysics but without knowing more about it I can't say anything else really

 

[DocWolfe]

well it could be the center of the big bang... if its the center then there is a huge gravitational force.

 

[Ingafgrinn Macabre]

well it could be the center of the big bang... if its the center then there is a huge gravitational force.

unless everything is blown away, then there's a gravity void....

Besides, there is no real center of the big bang. Since every particle here was involved in the big bang, every particle could be seen as the center. Also, according to the current evidence we got, and the theories about them, the universe is ever-expanding.

It's still unknown what the phenomenon called The "Great Attractor" is. Unlikely it's a supermassive black hole though. just due to it's shear gravitational force it's likely to be a much much more exotic phenomenon.

 

[atos]

One will have to assume that there is a gravityfield in the middle of our galaxy most likely a black hole which sets the milkyway in spin. And we all know what vortexes look like. I personally see similarities between the milkyway and a vortex. Since we know the Milkyway is a spiralgalaxy, which means it has the form of a spiral (obviously).

Hope I made thigns clear.

 

[Ingafgrinn Macabre]

One will have to assume that there is a gravityfield in the middle of our galaxy most likely a black hole which sets the milkyway in spin. And we all know what vortexes look like. I personally see similarities between the milkyway and a vortex. Since we know the Milkyway is a spiralgalaxy, which means it has the form of a spiral (obviously).

Hope I made thigns clear.

Well, to me you did... sort-of

But this Great Attractor hasn't got anything to do with that which makes our galaxy spin and spiral.

This site explains the black hole in the center of our galaxy a bit. Also shows how we can see black holes.
Love this picture from the site which shows stars moving around that center:

The great Attractor is something outside our galaxy, infact, it attracts entire clusters of galaxies.

 

[atos]

Well one could speculate that The great Attractor are to the black hole as galaxies are as stars in our on galaxy to a blackhole.

Bleh, that didnt make sense, hope osmeone understood it I'm le tired.

 

[Lamp]

I've just sent an email to NASA, so hopefully they'll be able to tell me something

(although last time I emailed them they told me the universe was a balloon and the earth was an ant living on it............hmm. NASA my ass)

 

[Jiggs]

No, it's not a supermassive black hole.

 

[Lamp]

Wanna bet ?

 

[DocWolfe]

could be like a large quantity of dark matter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter

 

[Svartmetall]

The 'great attractor' is, if memory serves, usually held to be the combined gravitational pull of a group of galactic superclusters...

Space fucking owns .

 

[old.Tohtori]

Space fucking owns .

No.

There's a lot of sucking and pulling, but there's rarely any owning involved.