Can A 'Distant' Quasar Lie Within A Nearby Galaxy?

University of California, San Diego ^ | 10 January 2005 | Kim McDonald

[PatrickHenry]

An international team of astronomers has discovered within the heart of a nearby spiral galaxy a quasar whose light spectrum indicates that it is billions of light years away. The finding poses a cosmic puzzle: How could a galaxy 300 million light years away contain a stellar object several billion light years away?

The team’s findings, which were presented today in San Diego at the January meeting of the American Astronomical Society and which will appear in the February 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal, raise a fundamental problem for astronomers who had long assumed that the “high redshifts” in the light spectra of quasars meant these objects were among the fastest receding objects in the universe and, therefore, billions of light years away.

“Most people have wanted to argue that quasars are right at the edge of the universe,” said Geoffrey Burbidge, a professor of physics and astronomer at the University of California at San Diego’s Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences and a member of the team. “But too many of them are being found closely associated with nearby, active galaxies for this to be accidental. If this quasar is physically associated with this galaxy, it must be close by.”

Astronomers generally estimate the distances to stellar objects by the speed with which they are receding from the earth. That recession velocity is calculated by measuring the amount the star’s light spectra is shifted to the lower frequency, or red end, of the light spectrum. This physical phenomenon, known as the Doppler Effect, can be experienced by someone standing near train tracks when the whistle or engine sounds from a moving train becomes lower in pitch, or sound frequency, as the train travels past.

Astronomers have used redshifts and the known brightness of stars as fundamental yardsticks to measure the distances to stars and galaxies. However, Burbidge said they have been unable to account for the growing number of quasi-stellar objects, or quasars—intense concentrations of energy believed to be produced by the swirling gas and dust surrounding massive black holes—with high redshifts that have been closely associated with nearby galaxies.

“If it weren’t for this redshift dilemma, astronomers would have thought quasars originated from these galaxies or were fired out from them like bullets or cannon balls,” he added.

The discovery reported by the team of astronomers, which includes his spouse, E. Margaret Burbidge, another noted astronomer and professor of physics at UCSD, is especially significant because it is the most extreme example of a quasar with a very large redshift in a nearby galaxy.

“No one has found a quasar with such a high redshift, with a redshift of 2.11, so close to the center of an active galaxy,” said Geoffrey Burbidge.

Margaret Burbidge, who reported the team’s finding at the meeting, said the quasar was first detected by the ROSAT X-ray satellite operated by the Max-Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany and found to be closely associated with the nucleus of the spiral galaxy NGC 7319. That galaxy is unusual because it lies in a group of interacting galaxies called Stephan’s Quintet.

Using a three-meter telescope operated by the University of California at Lick Observatory in the mountains above San Jose and the university’s 10-meter Keck I telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, she and her team measured the redshifts of the spiral galaxy and quasar and found that the quasar appears to be interacting with the interstellar gas within the galaxy.

Because quasars and black holes are generally found within the most energetic parts of galaxies, their centers, the astronomers are further persuaded that this particular quasar resides within this spiral galaxy. Geoffrey Burbidge added that the fact that the quasar is so close to the center of this galaxy, only 8 arc seconds from the nucleus, and does not appear to be shrouded in any way by interstellar gas make it highly unlikely that the quasar lies far behind the galaxy, its light shining through the galaxy near its center by “an accident of projection.”

“If this quasar is close by, its redshift cannot be due to the expansion of the universe,” he adds. “If this is the case, this discovery casts doubt on the whole idea that quasars are very far away and can be used to do cosmology.”

Other members of the team, besides Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge, included Vesa Junkkarinen, a research physicist at UCSD; Pasquale Galianni of the University of Lecce in Italy; and Halton Arp and Stefano Zibetti of the Max-Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany.

[not-a-neocon]

"The finding poses a cosmic puzzle: How could a galaxy 300 million light years away contain a stellar object several billion light years away?"

Maybe the galaxy is 700 billion light years long and the quasar is at its far edge?

[carlr]

One last question because have gotten way off topic of the thread.One of my complaints about space exploration has been money spent compared to practicality.That is for scientific exploration on its own accord or for the potential of "mining" for resources the time to travel within our solar system makes it unpractical at this time.It does`nt seem much has been done to advance the travel time.Why couldn`t this be used sort of as a corollary?
We put a several stage craft into orbit and than at successive intervals one craft fires another and so on each one adding to the speed of the one that "fired"it.

[commonguymd]

Quite a large galaxy.

[PatrickHenry]

One of my complaints about space exploration has been money spent compared to practicality.

Almost everything NASA does is likely related to defense. Propulsion systems, guidance systems, missile controls, miniaturization, communications, spy satellites, etc. They blow some of their budget (more than I'd like) on stuff I see as unproductive, but mostly it's probably okay. I don't mind if, having developed a new system, they send it to Saturn to look around. The stuff has to be tested anyway, and the astronomy payoff is obtained at little additional cost.

[longshadow]

We put a several stage craft into orbit and than at successive intervals one craft fires another and so on each one adding to the speed of the one that "fired"it.

I'm afraid you've lost me..... all I can say is velocities are directly additive as long as the craft's velocity is <<"c" (speed of light), but not as you approach light speed.

An additional consideration is the increase in apparent mass as the velocity approaches "c" -- this requires vastly increasing expenditures of energy (read: fuel) to obtain the same incremental increase in velocity.

IOW, it takes virtually an infinite amount of fuel to accelerate an object having mass to a velocity="c", because the apparent mass ---> infinity as "v" ---> "c."

[PatrickHenry]

We put a several stage craft into orbit and than at successive intervals one craft fires another and so on each one adding to the speed of the one that "fired"it.

Also, if you look at a typical 3-stage rocket, the first stage is enormous. It's almost all fuel, the purpose of which is to get the next two stages off the ground. If you had a 50-stage or 100-stage rocket to do what you suggest, I shudder to think how big the first stage would have to be in order to lift the others. In other words, if the ship carries its own fuel, you're unlikly to get very far with your project. It will have to await a whole new propulsion system. And even then, as longshadow says, you can't achieve lightspeed even if you had an infinite fuel supply.

[carlr]

I did`nt mean the speed of light.I was going back to the illustration of the plane firing a bullet.If we can get a craft traveling at say 15-20,000 mph and from that point "fire" another one at a greater speed wouldn`t its speed relative to us here be faster ie:the second craft if it can achieve 15-20,000 mph from its starting position would than be 30-40,000 mph as we would regard it.

I know there are problems with size,weight,fuel capacity but is the possibility real.It may not be possible for reasons I`m not knowledgeable enough to see but still am curious.

[not-a-neocon]

"The wisest man is the one who realizes how little he knows..."

Didn't Socrates say that?

The more I know, the more I realize how much I didn't know.

[PatrickHenry]

Yo momma's so fat she's gotta Schwarzschild radius.

[longshadow]

If we can get a craft traveling at say 15-20,000 mph and from that point "fire" another one at a greater speed wouldn`t its speed relative to us here be faster ie:the second craft if it can achieve 15-20,000 mph from its starting position would than be 30-40,000 mph as we would regard it.

In theory, this works.

Just so you know, the staging idea is used to increase the efficiency of the rocket: if you use a single stage rocket, once you use up a little bit of fuel, you now have a little bit of empty weight you are accelerating, which diverts energy from accelerating remaining fuel + payload.

The staging idea is a way to dump empty weight, and thus increase the efficiency of the rocket. The most efficient possible staging plan would be an infinite number of stages having infinitesimal mass, and which are shed continuously as the rocket accelerates, such that at any given instant in time, 100% of the rocket's thrust is always accelerating fuel + payload, and no dead weight. But the complexity of this outweighs the benefits, so three or four stages are typically used as a practical approximation of what I described.

That said, staging (or lack thereof) isn't the problem with getting high interplanetary velocities -- exhaust velocity (or lack therof) is. Maximum energy efficiency occurs when the rocket's exhaust velocity is exactly equal but opposite the rocket's forward velocity (think about it: if the exhaust is either faster or slower, there is residual kinetic energy in the exhaust that wasn't imparted to the vehicle's kinetic energy, and thus is wasted.) Typical chemical rocket engines have a exhaust velocity that's nowhere near 30,000 or 40,000 mph, so as you try to approach those speeds, your energy efficiency goes down, and now you need MORE FUEL!

That's why there's so much interst in things like ion motors for long range travel; while their thrust is low, they can attain very high exhaust velocities, and thus are much more energy efficient for long journey's at higher speeds.

That said, I defer to RA, who's much more knowledgeable than I in these matters.

[dangus]

>>They may be a 1000 times more experienced in this field than you or I, but they are no more, nor no less intelligent than anyone else.<<


That's a bizarre and puzzling statement. While I certainly agree that focus is an underrated factor in intelligence, there absolutely is innate intelligence. You can steal a baby from astro-physicists and have brought up by border-line retarded people, and his intelligence will be very close to the geniuses whose genes he has.

I don't know about you, but my I.Q. is only about 140. These physicists are a LOT more intelligent than I am. That doesn't mean that they are better or wiser, but they are smarter.

[longshadow]

Yo momma's so fat she's gotta Schwarzschild radius.

Yo momma's such a tub of lard, her control-top pantyhose is known as the "Event Horizon"....

[dr_lew]

It's the redshifts of galaxies that are used as a yardstick.
Quasars have always been mysterious. For a long time, people
suggested that their redshifts were due to something other
than cosmological redshift, just because the distance
implied by a cosmological redshift meant they were insanely
bright, small objects - "QUASi-stellAR radio objects."

Finally, the cosmological redshift became a consensus
on the "preponderance of evidence."

So it would seem this finding is stirring a pot that's
been on the back burner for a while.

( This is the view of an interested amateur. )

[PatrickHenry]

Yo momma's such a tub of lard, her control-top pantyhose is known as the "Event Horizon"...

Yo momma's so dumb she thinks lightspeed is a lo-cal upper.

[not-a-neocon]

Strange.

I hardly ever read the Bible and yet always thought that in the simple one will eventually find the complex. That is the same idea as expressed in the Bible.

[carlr]

I get what you`re saying,the crafts forward speed would be faster than the exhaust(thrust)would be relative to any position.Kind of acts like a governor.Thanks.

[StopGlobalWhining]

Check out the Book Seeing Red by Halton Arp by clicking on this link or going directly to

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0968368905/qid=1044759513/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-5804232-2897668?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

This may be the vindication for Arp and his colleagues that has been denied him by the "mainstream" cosmological community for too many long years.

[Doctor Stochastic]

In the 1920-1935 time frame, there were two hypothesized but unobserved neutral particles: the neutron and neutrino. Both were later observed.

Of course, changing the theory to fit the observations is normal scientific procedure.

[StopGlobalWhining]

Another factor is that we assume all objects are moving away from us, and that we are the center of the universe.

True on both counts!

1. All objects are moving away from us.

2. We are at the cnter of the universe.

What's also true is, so are they.

Just think, at the instant of the big bang everything in the universe was at the same place. Think about what that means in relation to the center of the universe if space started out at that point and expanded from there. Who is in the center of the universe if not us. And them?

[Doctor Stochastic]

Another factor is that we assume all objects are moving away from us, and that we are the center of the universe.

The second statement doesn't follow from the first. On an expanding spherical surface, every point is moving away from every other point, but the surface has no center.