Close your eyes for five seconds, then open them again. You’ve moved about 3,000km (1,864 miles) due to the gravitational pull of the Great Attractor, a region in intergalactic space that is drawing the Milky Way and thousands of other galaxies towards it. In space, everything is moving, including Earth spinning on its axis and orbiting the Sun, the Solar System moving around the center of the Milky Way, and the Universe expanding.
In the late 1970s, scientists discovered that the Milky Way and nearby galaxies were moving towards a point in space beyond the Milky Way’s plane, but they couldn’t see it due to the Milky Way’s light. This region was later identified as the Great Attractor, the central gravitational point of the Laniakea supercluster, where we are currently being pulled at 600 km/s. However, Laniakea is not gravitationally bound and will eventually move away from us due to dark energy’s effect on the expansion of the Universe. The Milky Way will then start moving away instead of towards the Great Attractor.
The universe is a complex mixture of motion and gravity, with some objects being pulled closer together while others move apart. Despite our understanding of these movements, we discovered in the late 1970s that there was an additional force drawing the Milky Way and nearby galaxies towards a region beyond its plane. This area was later identified as the Great Attractor, a significant gravitational force located at the center of the Laniakea supercluster.
The Great Attractor is not a physical object but rather a location in space that exerts a strong gravitational pull on surrounding galaxies, including our Milky Way. Currently, we’re hurtling towards it at approximately 600 km/s. However, the Laniakea supercluster isn’t gravitationally bound and will eventually move away from us due to dark energy’s effects on the expansion of the Universe. This means that, in the future, the Milky Way will start moving away from the Great Attractor instead of towards it.
Source: https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/great-attractor