New finding may rewrite Einstein’s theory of gravity

  • Einstein’s theory of gravity may have to be rewritten, after researchers found a gigantic ring of galaxies darting away from us much faster than predicted.
  • The 10 million light year-wide ring made up of small galaxies is expanding rapidly like a mini Big Bang, researchers said.

The team believes our neighbouring galaxy, Andromeda, once flew past our own galaxy at close range, creating a sling-shot of several small galaxies.

“If Einstein’s gravity were correct,

  • our galaxy would never come close enough to Andromeda to scatter anything that fast.

If true, the discovery would force

  • a new understanding of gravity and about our cosmos, as such a galactic flyby only makes sense if gravity weakens more slowly as galaxies drift apart than mainstream thinking suggests.

Possible explanation

  • “The ring-like distribution is very peculiar.
  • These small galaxies are like a string of raindrops flung out from a spinning umbrella.
  • This tsunami-like wake in the sky was likely stirred up by a near—miss of the speeding Andromeda galaxy with our own galaxy, the Milky Way.
  • The two massive galaxies always orbited each other in a plane and would have scattered dwarf galaxies in their paths, perhaps explaining why the speeding dwarfs are in a plane also containing the Milky Way and Andromeda.

Andromeda Galaxy:

  • also known as Messier 31, M31, or NGC 224, is a spiral galaxy approximately 780 kiloparsecs (2.5 million light-years) from Earth.
  • It is the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way and was often referred to as the Great Andromeda Nebula in older texts.
  • It received its name from the area of the sky in which it appears, the constellation of Andromeda, which was named after the mythological princess Andromeda.
  • Andromeda is approximately 220,000 light years across, and it is the largest galaxy of the Local Group, which also contains the Milky Way, the Triangulum Galaxy, and other smaller galaxies.
  • Despite earlier findings that suggested that the Milky Way contains more dark matter and could be the largest in the grouping,

Source: The Hindu & Wiki

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