Word: quasar
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Schmidt story was not an easy one to report or to write. The world of quasar astronomy is one of nigh-incredible reaches in time, space and imagination. It involves unheard-of distances, temperatures and energy. It has its own logic and language, and it takes astronomy to the edge of theology, physics to the edge of metaphysics. It raises such questions as whether the universe came into being suddenly, or whether it existed forever-and in that case, what is "forever"? What is eternity? "The subject," says Science Writer Leon Jaroff, "makes the mind boggle, especially when...
...notes, with the help of Researcher Fortunata Sydnor Trapnell and major contributions from TIME bureaus. During an interview with Schmidt at Caltech, Jaroff was especially pleased when the astronomer let TIME in on a secret. "I looked through the microscope at the photo plate showing the latest quasar he discovered," says Jaroff. It is the newest and most dis tant, and our cover story is the first published account of this discovery...
...Caltech colleague, Sandage and Schmidt analyzed three of these objects, and found that they were moving away from the earth at tremendous speeds. One of them, BSO-1 (blue stellar object) seems to be speeding at the rate of 125,000 miles a second, making it second only to quasar 3C-9 (149,000 miles a second) as the most distant known object. The spectral patterns also showed a presence of ionized carbon atoms that have been detected previously only in the most distant quasars. The blue objects probably outnumber quasars 500 to 1 and are scattered throughout the universe...
...With every new observation, the mystery deepened. Quasars turned out to be by far the most brilliant objects in the universe, shining with the light of from 50 to 100 galaxies, each containing 100 billion stars as bright as the sun. Where did all the energy come from? Searching for answers, Dr. Schmidt and his colleagues pored over spectrograms which showed quasar light separated into its various wave lengths. They knew that the most distant fast-moving bodies should show spectrogram lines of far ultraviolet light whose waves had been lengthened so much in their shift toward the red that...
Tripled Wave. Step by painful step Schmidt's search identified spectrogram lines and unlocked the spectral secrets of five new quasars. The most distant of them, 3C-9, showed signs of a kind of ultraviolet which comes from the sun in considerable quantities but is absorbed by the earth's atmosphere. It had never been photographed before by surface observatories. In the 3C-9's spectrum, its wave length had been more than tripled by shifting toward the red. It showed as an easily photographed blue and proved that the quasar's speed...