Word: djorgovski
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...spectrum where light has been absorbed by other elements--perhaps those in the object's outer atmosphere or in gas clouds between the object and Earth. Bewildered, the Caltech team looked for other answers. Maybe the object was a supernova, an exploding star, which often projects what Djorgovski calls a "weird-looking" spectrum. But the team observed the target a number of times over several months and noted no change. That ruled out a supernova's light, which gradually fades after the initial explosion...
...personal guess," says Djorgovski. "is that we're dealing with a very special, sub-sub-sub-category of quasar. There may be only one of them." Or, he muses, his team may be looking at a quasar through a "very special" line of sight, a line that passes through a strange cloud of gas that accounts for its curious absorptions. But, he stresses, "I wouldn't stake any money on either of these possibilities...
...Caltech team was reluctant to publish a report that would merely say, in Djorgovski's words, "Gee, look what we've found," without offering a viable explanation. So after three years of examining and re-examining the spectrum and vainly searching through scientific literature, the team at last decided to go semipublic...
...meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Chicago this spring, they showed their prize spectrum to other scientists and asked for their opinion. No one had seen anything like it, and few would hazard a guess about what message it might convey. Stymied at every turn, Djorgovski is pinning his hopes on investigating the object's invisible infrared emissions, which have wavelengths slightly longer than the red light at one end of the visible spectrum. Within the next few weeks, astronomers at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii will train a telescope equipped with an experimental infrared spectrograph on the quarry...
...Everybody relax and go back to your drinks." That may not be the way scientists usually talk to one another, but it was the punch line of Caltech astronomer George Djorgovski's e-mailed message to colleagues last week informing them that a cosmic mystery that had stumped astronomers for three years wasn't so mysterious after all. Slightly embarrassed by all the fuss, including at least one starstruck Page One account suggesting otherworldly possibilities, Djorgovski said the enigmatic speck of light that he had found in the constellation Serpens was what he had suspected it was all along...