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?

  • BradleyUffner@lemmy.worldEnglish
    16·
    2 years ago

    No. Local attractive forces, like gravity, especially those at the atomic level, overpower the expansion for tightly coupled systems. So the earth isn’t expanding, and neither are the people on it. I don’t recall exactly what scale it kicks in at, but there is a good chance it’s not even affecting the distance between planets in a system. Most likely it only plays a role in inter-planetary-systems and larger. Ie, stars get further apart from each other.

    Edit. This explains it better https://www.astronomy.com/science/does-the-space-inside-an-atom-expand-with-the-universe/

    That says that the expansion really only applies to the space between galaxies. In anything smaller than that, gravity still overpowers the expensive forces. Making it far weaker than I initially thought.