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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 [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Think of a balloon. Squish the deflated balloon as where everything was. All of it started at a similar point but then the balloon started expanding and everything is moving away at an accelerated pace from each other

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The balloon analogy can lead one astray. Our minds see the middle of the balloon inside and think “Big Bang was there”. But the analogy is only for the surface, and the Big Bang included all the surface, and nothing else.