Oct 01, 2004 Quasar in Front of Galaxy
October 3, 2003: the big bang was proved wrong. Again. And here is the proof (image above). The galaxy, NGC 7319, is a Seyfert 2, which means it is a galaxy shrouded with such heavy dust clouds that they obscure most of the bright, active nucleus that defines a normal Seyfert galaxy. This galaxy has a redshift of 0.0225. The tiny white spot is a quasar either silhouetted in front of the opaque gas clouds or embedded in the topmost layers of the dust. The redshift of the quasar is 2.114.
Why does this prove the big bang wrong? One of the two major foundations of the big bang is that redshift is proportional to distance. That means the larger the redshift of an object, the farther away it must be. The other major foundation of the big bang is that all redshift is a measure of velocity. Again, the larger the redshift of an object, the faster it is moving away from us. Combined, these two foundations become the expanding universe, which can be traced backwards to the big bang.
Look at the picture again. By the big bang principles, this quasar must be billions of light years farther from us than the galaxy, because its redshift is so much larger. And yet the galaxy is opaque, so the quasar must be near the surface of the dust clouds or even in front of them.