Does the discovery of "dark flow" suggest that something is tugging on the universe from the outside

Perhaps a parallel universe? Or, is it a fluke?

Ah! The Great Attractor rears its head again!

It's been known for more than 70 years, basically from the first projections of the big bang theory, that there are wrinkles in the known universe which can't be explained by the big bang theory. One of those wrinkles comes from the ideas in chaos theory, that there can be repulsors and attractors. A repulsor is rather like where water from a tap hits the surface of water in a sink - everything (on the surface of the water) appears to move away from it. A drain is like an attractor - everything on the surface of the water moves towards it.

The difference is that, as soon as the "repulsor" stops (like the big bang), the flow away from it also stops (very soon afterwards), while with the attractor, even after it stops (gets blocked) there is still a tendency for things to move towards it.

So, no parallel universe, no multiverse, but still a flow that can be detected, and no obvious explanation for it.

A fluke.

In the huge huge universe, matter just "had to be" flowing from point a to point b somewhere.

(thought I'd borrow some ersatz logic here. It seems to be very popular)

Therefore no need for the baggage of parallel universes or other encumbrances.

Cheers!