PhanthomJay said:Does the Milky Way galaxy, along with several other galaxies in the Local Group, orbit about the centre of that Local Group, and does the center of the Local Group orbit about some other center, etc.??, or is it just the stars that orbit their galactic centers?
PhanthomJay said:OK, thanks. I gather that the Milky Way and our Local Group of galaxies is moving toward some mysterious huge mass known as the Great Attractor, and that such motion is along a space-time geodesic, rather than an orbiting type circular or elliptical motion around it?'
PhanthomJay said:If the Milky Way is 'orbiting' about the center of the Local Group, and that center in turn is moving at some ridiculous speed toward the Great Attractor, is the Great Attractor also moving toward some other ridiculously large massive cluster, or does the buck stop there and the Attractor is just sort of hanging in free space (not including space-time expansion) without any particular motion??
Chronos said:This is all well and good, but, does not suggest the universe is rotating. The axis of rotation of local galaxies are randomly distributed. There is no preferred distribution as suggested if the universe itself was rotating.
PhanthomJay said:Let's forget the words 'rotation' or 'orbit'.The Earth is moving around the sun. The sun is moving around the center of the Milky Way. The Milky way is moving around the center of the Local Group. The center of the Local Group is moving toward that Great Attractor. Everything is moving. I see no reason why the Great Attractor is also not moving toward something, and that something must be moving toward something else. Movement without end, Amen?
Pretty hard to tell. It gets pretty sketchy to decide what is movement at this scale. Since we don't really know what this Great Attractor is or where it is, you can deduce that we're sort of poking about in the dark.PhanthomJay said:...does the buck stop there and the Attractor is just sort of hanging in free space (not including space-time expansion) without any particular motion??
Bluedust said:And then eventually they will all attract together again and cause another Big Bang?
DaveC426913 said:That scenario's likelihood is vanishing rapidly (if not completely debunked already). The expansion of the uiniverse is overwhelming the attraction on larger scales. The Big Freeze is looking to be the more likely. We end up in an observable universe devoid of any other galaxies but those gravitationally bound to us. Beyond a few million light years, the universe is completely barren.
A rotating galaxy is a type of galaxy that has a distinct rotational motion, with the stars, gas, and dust all orbiting around a central point. This rotation is caused by the gravitational pull of the galaxy's dark matter.
Scientists use a variety of techniques to measure the rotation of a galaxy, including spectroscopy and radio telescopes. These methods allow them to observe the Doppler shift of light and radio waves emitted by stars and gas in the galaxy, which can reveal their rotational speeds.
The Milky Way is the spiral galaxy that contains our solar system. It has a disc-like shape and rotates around its center, with the stars near the center taking about 200 million years to complete one full rotation, while those on the outer edges can take up to 1 billion years.
The Local Group is a cluster of galaxies that includes the Milky Way and its neighboring galaxies, such as Andromeda and the Magellanic Clouds. These galaxies are gravitationally bound to each other and rotate around a common center of mass.
Yes, there are countless rotating galaxies beyond the Local Group. In fact, the majority of galaxies in the universe are believed to have some level of rotational motion. The study of these galaxies can provide valuable insights into the formation and evolution of the universe.