Asri-unix.866 net.space utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:C70:sri-unix!CC.CLYDE@UTEXAS-20 Mon Mar 1 09:43:53 1982 Quasar speculations I have heard a new speculation from an astronomer as to what quasars are: VERY young galaxies forming out of the primordial Big Bang produced hydrogen. Of course this assumes that the redshift for quasars are cosmological, that is due to their distance. The idea is that as all galaxies began to form out of the primordial hydrogen, a large number of VERY massive stars (>100 times the mass of our local little star) formed quickly, burned their guts out in a few million years and then exploded, dumping some of the stuff that we are made of into the galaxy. For the few million years that all these massive stars are shining, it is estimated that the galaxy would be VERY luminous (especially when you add in the ionized hydrogen clouds 100 kiloparseces in diameter). And since their redshifts (even if off by a factor of two) tell us that they are 5 to 15 billion light years away, meaning that looking at a quasar is viewing as close to the Big Bang as we are likely to see from the surface of out planet. So there's more astronomical grist for the discussion mill. ------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.