Autcsrgv.147
net.space
utcsrgv!donald
Fri Mar 5 19:08:19 1982
Quasars
Re: Quasars as spaceships.
The idea that quasars are the exhausts of spaceships smacks faintly of
the ridiculous (excuse me for being a pro-establishment stuffed shirt).
Immediately obvious questions arise:
- If the exhaust of these hypothetical is pure photons, then perhaps
one would observe these enormous redshifts, but then the question
of how the spectral lines by which these redshifts are measured got
there! It seems to me that a pure photon exhaust (via a an enormous
galaxy-sized laser) would *not* contain spectral lines by which a
redshift may be detected.
On the other hand, if these spaceships were shooting out very energetic
matter as reaction mass, then we would not observe redshifts because
the reaction mass (which is emitting the light) would be racing to-
wards us, cancelling the forward velocity of the spaceship.
- There must me quite a few of these civilizations have a strong dislike
of via lactea to be shootin' away from us all around the visible
celestial sphere.
Re: Superluminal Quasars.
There is nothing wrong with quasars apparently receding from each other
at superluminal velocities as measured by *us*. However, in their own
frame of reference each quasar must see the other as traveling at a speed
less than C.
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