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Do cosmologists know for sure that the Big Bang is propelling all matter away? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by aCosmicWave@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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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?

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[–] bstix 1 points 1 year ago

The expansion of the universe is not known for sure. Observations suggests that it is. If it was due to the Great Attractor, we should be able to observe the expansion to have a direction, and observations don't show that. It seems to expand equally in all directions.

However there are other theories of how the observations could be explained that does not involve an expansion.

Here's a recent article where it is suggested that it is mass of matter that changes rather than space expanding. It's all theoretical and unprovable as of now, but it also addresses other issues with the conventional explanations, so it will be interesting if true.

https://www.space.com/universe-expansion-could-be-a-mirage