Free Republic

A controversial alternative to black hole theory has been bolstered by observations of an object in the distant universe, researchers say. If their interpretation is correct, it might mean black holes do not exist and are in fact bizarre and compact balls of plasma called MECOs. Rudolph Schild of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, led a team that observed a quasar situated 9 billion light years from Earth. A quasar is a very bright, compact object, whose radiation is usually thought to be generated by a giant black hole devouring its surrounding matter. A rare cosmological...

An international team of astronomers has discovered within the heart of a nearby spiral galaxy a quasar whose light spectrum indicates that it is billions of light years away. The finding poses a cosmic puzzle: How could a galaxy 300 million light years away contain a stellar object several billion light years away? The team’s findings, which were presented today in San Diego at the January meeting of the American Astronomical Society and which will appear in the February 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal, raise a fundamental problem for astronomers who had long assumed that the “high redshifts” in...

Using 3,000 recently discovered quasars as searchlights on the distant universe, astronomers have mapped with unprecedented precision the distribution of the diffuse gas between galaxies. By combining these measurements with observations of the faint microwave glow of radiation left over from the Big Bang and other cosmological data, the researchers report that they have pinned down the age of the universe to an accuracy 5 times greater than ever before. By their reckoning, the cosmos is 13.6 billion years old, give or take 200 million years. The findings also uphold a leading model of cosmic evolution known as inflation, says...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 November 28 The Most Distant X-Ray Jet Credit: A. Siemiginowska (CfA) et al., CXC, NASAIllustration by M.Weiss (CXC) Explanation: A false-color x-ray image inset at upper left reveals emission from a cosmic jet of high-energy particles, 100,000 light-years in length, emerging from quasar GB1508+5714. An estimated 12 billion (12,000,000,000) light-years away, this appears to be the most distant energetic jet in the known Universe. Astrophysical jets of...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 May 20 A Primordial Quasar Drawing Credit: Wolfram Freudling et al. (STECF), ESO, ESA, NASA Explanation: What did the first quasars look like? The nearest quasars are now known to be supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies. Gas and dust that falls toward a quasar glows brightly, sometimes outglowing the entire home galaxy. The quasars that formed in the first billion years of the universe...

Some very distant galaxies called quasars are lit up dramatically by powerful black holes. Oddly, their radio emissions shimmer and twinkle when detected from Earth, even though radio waves are barely scrambled by Earth's atmosphere the way visible light is. One quasar, called PKS 0405-385, brightens and fades by 50 percent in less than an hour. Astronomers have concocted all manner of exotic theories to explain the behavior of the faraway, compact galaxies. The real answer, it seems, is unexpectedly closer at hand but still as interesting as anything imagined. New observations of PKS 0405-385 reveal that a layer of...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 October 7 The Galaxy and the Quasar Credit: R. Knacke (Penn State Erie) et al., Hubble Heritage Team, NASA Explanation: Is the galaxy in the center connected to the quasar on the upper right? Disagreements about systems like this have raged for decades and have been used to challenge the foundations of modern cosmology. Some believe that the quasar Markarian 205 was recently ejected from galaxy NGC...

When McVeigh smiled a content grin before he was killed, could it be it was because he knew 9/11 was coming. It was a grin saying I know something you don't. Thoughts?