The solar motion, relative to both the Rubin-Ford (1976) sample of galaxies and the microwave background, suggests that the Rubin-Ford sample is moving relative to the distant universe at a speed of 800 km/sec. A question as to whether this effect could be produced by gravitational accelerations due to density fluctuations that correspond to the observed galaxy correlation function is posed. If the universe is close to an Einstein-de Sitter model, it is shown that the rms peculiar velocity of a sample such as the Rubin-Ford is about 300 km/sec, and that the chance of the observed peculiar velocity exceeding 800 km/sec is about 0.08. If the universe has a low density, the required gravitation would require as yet unobserved, long-range galaxy correlations.
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Clutton-Brock et al. (1981) studied this question.
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