The Great Attractor: What’s Dragging the Milky Way at 14 Million MPH?

The Milky Way is racing toward the Great Attractor at 14 million mph (22 million km/h)—but we can’t see what’s pulling us. Hidden behind the Milky Way’s dust in the "Zone of Avoidance," this gravitational anomaly defies explanation. Is it a supercluster? Dark energy? Let’s explore.

The Invisible Force

• Discovery: In the 1970s, astronomers noticed galaxies flowing toward Centaurus.
• Hidden Location: Lies 250 million light-years away, obscured by the Milky Way’s bulge.
• Possible Culprit: The Norma Cluster, a massive galaxy gathering, plus unseen dark matter.

Panoramic view of the entire near-infrared sky reveals the distribution of galaxies beyond the Milky Way. The image is derived from the 2MASS Extended Source Catalog (XSC)—more than 1.5 million galaxies, and the Point Source Catalog (PSC)--nearly 0.5 billion Milky Way stars. The galaxies are color coded by redshift (numbers in parentheses) obtained from the UGC, CfA, Tully NBGC, LCRS, 2dF, 6dFGS, and SDSS surveys (and from various observations compiled by the NASA Extragalactic Database), or photo-metrically deduced from the K band (2.2 μm). Blue/purple are the nearest sources (z < 0.01); green are at moderate distances (0.01 < z < 0.04) and red are the most distant sources that 2MASS resolves (0.04 < z < 0.1). The map is projected with an equal area Aitoff in the Galactic system (Milky Way at center).

IPAC/Caltech, by Thomas Jarrett, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Why It’s a Cosmic Puzzle

• Observational Blind Spot: Dust and stars block optical telescopes.
• Radio Surveys: Projects like ASKAP use radio waves to peer through the Zone of Avoidance.
• Dark Energy’s Role? Some propose it’s amplifying the attraction.

Our galaxy is on a collision course with the unknown—stay tuned for breakthroughs!