Astronomers, worried about the displacement of the Local Group galaxies, after long studies came to a disappointing conclusion: it turns out that all this time a huge supercluster, being invisible to an observer from Earth, was pulling galaxies towards itself at a speed of 50 km / s!
Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, and its neighbors are in constant motion. According to scientists, the entire Local Group, consisting of 50 galaxies (their number is constantly growing as astronomers discover new galaxies) is currently shifting in one direction under the influence of the force of some huge invisible object. Recently, an international team of researchers even found the culprit: this is the supercluster closest to the Local Group - a huge mass of matter, consisting of many hundreds of galaxies. Surprisingly, no one could have noticed this incredible whopper until now, since gas and dust clouds, as well as the light of the stars of our own galaxy, interfere with the view.
Earlier studies of the Local Group's movement allowed scientists to predict that something was lurking beyond the Milky Way. The study of galaxies in the constellation Sails, through which the plane of our galaxy passes, also led to the conclusion that there is an increased galactic density in this area. Using the 10-meter Large South African Telescope and the 3.9-meter Anglo-Australian Telescope at Siding Spring, scientists measured the redshift of 4,500 galaxies in the constellation Sails, on either side of the edges of the Milky Way, and confirmed in monthly publications of the Royal Astronomical Society, UK that the increased density of galaxies in the region still exists at a distance of 800 million light years.
This discovery means that the surrounding area of our galaxy is a kind of "home" for another huge stellar structure, which is located slightly further than the Shapley supercluster, which previously claimed to be a "gravitational tractor." Thanks to gravitational attraction, the galaxies of the Parus constellation are moving in its direction at a speed of 50 km / s, which is enormous for humans. But there is no reason for alarm: this path will take as much as 5 trillion years, and by that time humanity will no longer care.