Great attractor no longer attractive?

Abstract

One of the key problems of observational cosmology is to map the distribution of matter. This is done by studying the distribution and velocities of galaxies and, over larger scales, clusters and even “super-clusters” of galaxies. In recent years the existence of a “great attractor” – a hypothetical concentration of matter – has been postulated to explain the motion of our own galaxy, and that of its neighbours, with respect to the “universal” reference frame provided by the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB). But new measurements of the redshifts from the spectra of a sample of IRAS galaxies as distant as 650m light years show that no such “prime mover” is required (M Rowan-Robinson et al. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. (1990) 247 1).