Word: quasars
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
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...
Astronomer Friedman would like next to monitor 3C 273's X-ray luminosity to determine if it varies as widely as the quasar's visible light. He would also like to get an X-ray spectrum, which might help unlock more of the quasars secrets. Either procedure would require a longer look at quasar X rays than can be obtained during the fleeting minutes that an X-ray telescope can be rocketed above the earth's atmosphere. The answer, Friedman says, is an X-ray telescope in an orbiting satellite or, better yet, one on the surface...