Are there regions inside the Universe where the Laws of Physics vary?

[ranyart]

Take for instance from our Galaxy we look out and gauge everything we see into a decent model of Cosmic understanding, we accept that Einstein's GR theory is the foundation of our view of the cosmos, and the Laws of physics are the same at all points in Spacetime.

Hubble observed that all the Galaxies are receeding away from us at every location one care's to point a telescope, with the exception of Andromeda, which shows a definate drift in our direction. Now the GREAT ATTRACTOR is a point/area of/in our Universe where if we were inside this great attractor, we would define all other bodies external as moving towards us (Contracting), instead of our current hypotheses of everything is moving away(Expanding)?

See here:http://www.solstation.com/x-objects/greatatt.htm

Now there is another observation if this detail map (link) is near enough correct (and I have no doubt as to the authors high standards) then there is another point/location at the far right and opposite to the area of Great Attractor ( glaobal-surface), the flow would be that of a Great Expansion? If one was to follow the flow to the furthest observable location, then the points of Space here would be in a highly expansive mode?

If one thinks of a water fountain? where the water that falls back on itself along a surface curvature, at the bottom (spout) there are two observations of water, one that is moving away from the spout (upwards)then curves back inwards after it falls away, at the near part of the spout, it is heading directly towards the spout?

Therefore our view of an Expanding Universe would have to be re-evaluated if we were located deep within the Great Attractor, then everything we would observe would be heading towards us! the Universe according to the Great Attractor observers would be Contracting.

 

[Nereid]

ranyart wrote: Therefore our view of an Expanding Universe would have to be re-evaluated if we were located deep within the Great Attractor, then everything we would observe would be heading towards us! the Universe according to the Great Attractor observers would be Contracting.

Er, no.

To quote from the link in your post: "The Great Attractor is apparently pulling in millions of galaxies in a region of the universe that includes the Milky Way, the surrounding Local Group of 15 to 16 nearby galaxies and larger Virgo Supercluster, and the nearby Hydra-Centaurus Supercluster, at velocities of around 600 (in the Local Group) to thousands of kilometers (or miles) per second (Lynden-Bell et al, 1988; and Dressler et al, 1987).[/color]"

and "The Great Attractor is one such structure, a diffuse concentration of matter some 400 million light-years in size located around 250 million light-years (ly) away in the direction of the southern Constellation Centaurus, about seven degrees off the plane of the Milky Way -- at a redshift-distance of 4,350 kilometers (or around 2,700 miles) per second.[/color]"

In other words, the attraction of the Great Attractor is in addition to the expansion of the universe. That expansion is ~70 km/sec/Mpc (megaparsec, ~=3.3 million light years), according to the best estimates to date. {If you do the arithmetic, you'll find the numbers don't quite match; perhaps the authors used a slightly different value for the Hubble constant? perhaps 'around 250 million light-years' is less precise than it seems?}

If you were at the centre of the Great Attractor, how far out would you have to observe to see the Hubble expansion? From the numbers in the link in your post, ~10 to 100 Mpc. In astronomical terms, that's not very far.

A more interesting idea might be to consider quasi-Earthlings in a solar system at the heart of a globular cluster, or deep inside an elliptical galaxy, or near the centre of a gas/dust-rich spiral galaxy ... especially in the last case, it may be very difficult to 'see' the universe at all!