Asri-unix.866
net.space
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.
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