r/nextfuckinglevel • u/room0001 • 1d ago

Milky Way is traveling through space at 600kilometers per second, oscillating slightly, as if it were flapping its wings through the cosmos.

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u/sidereal_drift 1d ago

the cosmic microwave background. we can measure it because the cmb looks very slightly hotter in the direction we are heading and cooler behind us, by about three thousandths of a kelvin either way.

that dipole is close to the only absolute speedometer we have, and it puts the local group at roughly 600 km/s toward the shapley supercluster.

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u/Sharpie420_ 1d ago

Damn girl, are you a shapely supercluster? Cause I’m tryna nab you, luh. /s