Here is the photo from the article showing the location of the quasar.
Posted on 01/10/2005 1:30:09 PM PST by 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.
It takes a certain escape velocity for a rocket to escape earth's gravity. A rocket that has done so is moving more slowly relative to the earth, than it would be if it hadn't first had to climb out of the earth's gravity well.
The same thing can happen with light. Light climbing out of an intense gravity well should be redshifted - the equivalent of "slowed" for light, which always has the same apparent speed in all reference frames, but loses energy climbing across a gravity gradient the same as anything else. Normally, this phenomenon is so weak that the shift is tiny - because gravity is weak and acts on an escaping photon for a very brief length of time.
But a black hole is defined as a region where gravity is so intense light can't escape at all. Well, near that region, light can escape - but must be attenuated by the above process. Epsilon outside the event horizon, the redshift would be enourmous - but only a tiny slice of matter can glow there, so it would not account for any meaningful signal. But extend a bit farther, and the attenuation might still be appreciable, with enough glowing matter to release lots of photons. If a quasar is an active consumer of matter, that would make a certain sense. Lots gets close, some of the energy is radiated away as light. But attentuated light, if it has to climb out of a deep gravity well first.
Or ? or could it could be some kind of " NEW DIMENTSION " of time measurement that we are not aware of yet besides the speed of light.
You beat me to it. The answer from my science teacher was:
"It will go back in time"
I always thought that was cool. A way to time travel. Made me draw a few spaceships in my tablet.
Here is the photo from the article showing the location of the quasar.
Point noted, and accepted.
So it primarily based on apparent location of the quasar a la Arp then?
What difference could this possibly make, other their distance figuring has been in error.
Excellent question. The answer depends upon what frame of reference you try to measure the projectile's speed. Also, since SR assumes that no craft can travel at the speed of light, we need to assume that the craft is doing something like 99.9% of the speed of light.
From the standpoint of an observer on the craft, the projectile seems to leave the gun in the normal manner, at the normal speed relative to the gun and craft. But to an observer on a planet adjacent to the craft's trajectory, the bullet appears to be moving only a tiny bit faster than the craft, and always less than the speed of light.
This anomaly is better understood if the craft and the ground based observers both have clocks that are observable. To the observer in the craft, he thinks his clock is running at normal speed, but relative to the ground-based observer's clock, the clock on the craft appears to be running v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. This is called "time dilation," and is an effect predicted by SR, and which has been experimentally verified by comparing atomic clicks on the ground with atomic clocks carried in jet aircraft.
The point of all this is that unlike the Galilean view of the world, in which time was thought to be absolute (all clocks should be in agreement regardless of their frame of reference), the way the Universe actually works is that each observer will measure time in a manner that is dependent upon what his frame of reference is relative to the events he is timing. Essentially, time was thought to be invariant in the Galilean Universe. But as Einstein predicted, and experiment has verified, time is "relative" whereas the invariant quantity is the speed of light: in all frames of reference, light will travel through a vacuum at the same speed.
Use a beam of light instead of a projectile. I asume you'll aim it in the direction that you're already moving. The light will travel at the speed of light, no faster. If you're already traveling at lightspeed when you switch on the beam (which is highly unlikely), the beam will stay with you.
You keep stepping on my lines.
You can't fool me by agreeing with me; I KNOW you're just itching to start a flamewar!
;-)
The early worm catches the bird.
Yo momma's so ugly she's her own frame of reference.
The assumption has been that any object massive and dense enough to create a significant redshift, would collapse into a black hole.
What if there was something (dark matter?) that could aggregate itself into a massive enough object that it would have significant gravitational redshift, but NOT collapse into a black hole?
Ping. Another case of non distance/velocity related redshift?
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