Word: quasar
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...million times the light-gathering power of the unaided eye, the giant telescopes are extremely sensitive to the slightest glare in the sky. Even the light from a city 50 miles away can blot out the dim specks produced on a photographic plate by a distant galaxy or quasar. Smog adds to the astronomer's headache; by scattering ground light in all directions, tiny smog particles can greatly increase the glare over an observatory. Not only the amount, but also the character of the light can affect a telescope's usefulness. Increasingly, mercury-vapor street lamps...
There are other compelling objections to NASA's announcement. Most modern astronomers are confident that the technical yardstick by which they measure distant galaxies and quasars-the red shift of light from those bodies-is reasonably accurate. And by that measure, the most distant quasar so far observed by astronomers is about 8 billion light-years away. Furthermore, in the complex Einsteinian geometry of space, diameter is a naive measurement; normal concepts of shape are meaningless. Astronomers were also nettled by the way that NASA released its information. Ignoring the scientific community, the space agency has to date published...
...Cubicar's main drawback seems to be that its roof and four walls are glass, allowing the squares of the world to see in as easily as the riders of the cube can see out. But then, explains the car's designer, a Vietnamese Parisian named Quasar (after the far-out starlike bodies) Khanh (TIME, Oct. 27), "Transparency is part of the modern world...
Pulsars were first detected last sum mer, shortly after Cambridge University's Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory began using a new and highly sensitive radio telescope. Investigating the angular size of a quasar, a pigtailed, 24-year-old Irish graduate student named Jocelyn Bell noticed some strange, pulsating signals that were "so weak they were hard to pinpoint." Working in excited-secrecy, a Mullard Observatory team led by Astronomer Anthony Hewish began an intensive analysis of the pulsations...
Farthest out of the see-through designers-at least in name-is Quasar Khanh, a 32-year-old Vietnamese now living in Paris, who appropriated the name of the most distant starlike bodies in the universe to distinguish himself from his better-known wife Emmanuelle, who is a pretty far-out designer of women's clothes. Quasar's furniture also uses just two components: pillows and a hard plastic frame shaped like a squashed three-dimensional U that, standing up, serves as a chair, on its side can be used as a see-through table. "Transparency...