Autcsrgv.147
net.space
utzoo!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.