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New Galaxies Discovered Behind The Milky Way Might Help Explain The Great Attractor

The Milky Way
Image via Pixabay

The Milky Way is not only the spiral shaped galaxy that plays host to our own planet, it’s also an obstruction of our view of space which has, until now, prevented us from peering behind. But now, with the assistance of an an innovative new receiver attached to the Parkes radio telescope in Australia, an international team of scientists have found a way to peer through the Milky Way and what they’ve found might help scientists one day explain what the powerful and mysterious gravitational anomaly known as the Great Attractor.

The Great Attractor, as it has been dubbed, is a gravitational force that is not only pulling our own galaxy, but hundreds of thousands of other galaxies as well. And while the gravitational pull is believed to exert a force that the National Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) has indicated to be the equivalent of “a million billion Suns,” scientists have yet to unravel its mysteries.

Professor Lister Staveley-Smith with the University of Western Australia, lead author of the recently published study detailing the discovery of new galaxies previously hidden by the Milky Way, explained in a statement that scientists “don’t actually understand what’s causing this gravitational acceleration on the Milky Way or where it’s coming from,” but what is known is “that in this region there are a few very large collections of galaxies” and our own galaxy “is moving towards them at more than two million kilometers per hour.”

We don’t actually understand what’s causing this gravitational acceleration on the Milky Way or where it’s coming from

In total, the international team of scientists behind the innovative new approach to peering through the obstruction that is our galaxy have discovered 883 galaxies. One-third of the galaxies are new to science, as their discovery marks the first time they’ve ever been seen.

According to Renee Kraan-Korteweg, an astronomer and a professor at the University of Cape Town, astronomers have been trying to find a means by which to see beyond the Milky Way for decades, but thus far, “only radio observations” such as those made with Parkes have proven effective.

We’ve used a range of techniques but only radio observations have really succeeded in allowing us to see through the thickest foreground layer of dust and stars

The findings of the international team of researchers from the United States, South Africa, Australia and the Netherlands was published in the Astronomical Journal on February 9, 2016.

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