Now how do we clock the return run ? :-)
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UH clocks Milky way's 1.4M speed
HILO HI; The Milky Way galaxy, which includes Earth and the sun, is being
pulled toward an enormous mass of galaxies a half-billion light-years away,
University of Hawaii astronomers have confirmed with X-ray studies.
The result is the entire Milky Way is moving through space at 1.4 million mph.
Astronomers have known for decades that the Milky Way was being pulled
by something really big called "the Great Attractor."
But they could not see this hypothetical attractor because they would have
to look through the Milky Way to do so. Visible light just could not get
through the dusty, cluttered galaxy.
Now UH astronomers Dale Kocevski, Harald Eberling, and R. Brent Tully,
along with UH alumnus Chris Mullis, have seen through the galaxy looking
at X-rays that pass through space dust the way they pass through human flesh.
Kocevski announced their work Tuesday at the American Astronomical Society i
n Washington, D.C.
What they found was a "significant concentration of galaxies" pulling the
Milky Way, 500 million light-years from Earth, four times the distance of
the Great Attractor.
The discovery of two attractors instead of one was good news for understanding
the density of the universe. One attractor would have implied too much matter
in
the universe, the UH Institute for Astronomy said. Two widely spaced attractors
imply a better distribution of matter, they said.
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