You can’t feel it but you’re currently moving at an incredible speed.
The Earth is spinning at around 1,600km/h while the Sun is steamrolling through the Milky Way at an astonishing 850,000 km/h.
If that wasn’t nauseating enough, the Milky Way itself is moving at an incredible 2,000,000 km/h.
While we know that the universe is expanding, the cause for the Milky Way’s speed and direction has been an issue of contention.
Originally we thought that the reason for our haste was a vast region of galaxies called the Great Attractor that, like a magnet, was pulling in any galaxy that was unfortunate enough to get too close.
Well now researchers led by Prof. Yehuda Hoffman at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem believed that in addition to being pulled, we’re also being pushed.
In a new study, the researchers claim to have discovered a vast dark region of our intergalactic neighbourhood that is actually repelling galaxies away from it.
It’s called the Dipole Repeller and it’s an area of the universe that has almost nothing in it except dark empty space.
How did they discover it? Well by using powerful telescopes like Hubble, Prof. Hoffman and his team were able to create a 3D map which showed the galaxy flows around us.
By analysing the result of this they found that there was an area of space that was repelling everything around it.
Astronomy Photographer of the Year:
