Word: 3c
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...tiny spot of light known as 3C-147 looked no different from the countless millions of dim stars that can be picked out by the giant, 200-in. telescope on top of Mount Palomar. But when astronomers from Caltech's radio observatory reported that their 90-ft. dish antennas were picking up powerful radio waves from 3C-147's faint gleam, Palomar's men decided to make a closer examination...
...trick worked. The spectrum of one of the radio stars, 3C-273, turned out to be the spectrum of an object racing away from the earth at 31,000 miles per sec., one-sixth the speed of light. But only galaxies, which get their speed from the general expansion of the universe, can move that fast. The astronomers concluded that they were dealing not with a star but with an entire distant galaxy...
...there were more problems. According to the rules that govern the expanding universe, a galaxy moving at one-sixth the speed of light must be 2 billion light-years away. But how could 3C-273 be so far away and still so bright...
Greenstein and Schmidt turned to another one of the five bright radio stars. The spectrum of 3C-48, they discovered, is even more peculiar than 3C-273. Study showed that its brightly visible light has shifted so far it must come from a galaxy receding from the earth at one-third the speed of light. It must be 3.6 billion light-years away. To look like a bright star despite its enormous distance, 3C-48 must give off 100 times as much light as the entire Milky Way galaxy with its 100 billion stars...
...powerful radio sources are galaxies that have apparently exploded, spewing into space vast clouds of nonluminous turbulent gas that still generate radio waves after millions of years (TIME, Feb. 8). These galaxies, too, were probably abnormally brilliant in visible light soon after they exploded. Astronomers now feel sure that 3C-273 and 3C-48, the brightest things in the universe, are galaxies caught in the very act of explosion...