Expert: Philip Stahl - 1/13/2009

Question
  Hello Mr Stahl,

  I am very new to astronomy and would greatly appreciate your help with a question I have.

  I have read that all things that we can see in the universe(and some that we cannot) are moving away from us and each other at great speeds, and that the farther away an object is, the faster it is travelling.

   Is it possible that the universe is being pulled in the same direction toward an enormous gravitational force in the way that dust particles in the air are sucked in to a vacuum?  I noticed that the dust particles speed up as they get closer to the vacuum.

Answer
Hello,

All the evidence we currently have discloses the cosmos is being *pulled apart*, not in the "same direction". We have data from Type II supernovae which bear this out.

I suggest you try to get hold of the current issue of ASTRONOMY magazine (Feb., 2009) which has an extensive article 'Will Dark Energy tear the Universe Apart?'

If you are able with a more detailed examination of the evidence, try to find the article:

'Supernovae, Dark Energy and the Accelerating Universe', by Saul Perlmutter, in Physics Today, April, 2003, p. 53.

Hope this helps!

See also other answers from the previous answer set to do with dark energy.