Word: quasars
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...announcement said that Astronomer Maarten Schmidt of Caltech had discovered a quasar (quasi-stellar radio source) racing away from earth at 80% of the speed of light. That brief observation last week surely marks a significant milestone in the expanding reach of modern astronomy. Since speed is related to distance, the speed of Schmidt's quasar makes it by far the most distant object ever identified. Even more important, discovering the quasar meant that Dr. Schmidt had refined a delicate technique that will almost certainly find still more distant objects and lead man close to the edge (if there...
What is a quasar? Answers were almost as numerous as the astronomers who turned up at the Montreal meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. New theories about the nature of "quasi-stellar sources" have only generated new arguments; new observations have only enlarged the uncertainty. About all that the assembled scientists could agree on with confidence was that Dr. Maarten Schmidt of Mt. Wilson and Palomar observatories was the proper choice for astronomy's prestigious Helen B. Warner prize...
...source, 3C-2, which was photographed as a dim reddish object only two years ago by the University of Minnesota observatory, has shown up in recent Palomar pictures four times as brilliant as before, but rich in blue light. It seems as if 3C-2 has turned into a quasar, giving a vast increase in shortwave radiation. But no one can imagine a process that could kindle such an outburst in so short a time...
...photographs from the University of Heidelberg, Dr. Harlan Smith of the University of Texas reported that the light from the heavenly body known as 3C-273 pulsates regularly on a 13-year cycle. Not that pulsating starlight is rare, but 3C-273 is not a star. It is a "quasar" (quasi-stellar object) that sends out powerful radio waves as well as light and is believed to be about 1 billion light-years away from the earth. Most astronomers think it is a galaxy in the process of exploding...
...astronomers have developed several theories to explain why galaxies can explode, but the 13-year pulsation of Quasar 3C-273 has them stumped. If the thing is really a galaxy, it must be many thousand light-years in diameter; light must take at least 1,000 years to cross a minor section of it, and according to relativity theory, nothing can move faster than light...