Quasars Further Disrupt Secular Cosmology

One of the strangest critters in the cosmos is called a quasar. The name is short for quasi-stellar radio source, but I like the sound of quasar. They were detected by the interference they made in transatlantic telephone lines (because in the olden days, pioneers in covered wagons didn't have good signals for their cell phones, so they had to use transatlantic phone lines instead, and quasars caused problems in the calls). I was joking with you about the covered wagons thing, but there really was interference in transatlantic phone lines. In the 1930s, a physicist with Bell Telephone found the interference was coming from our own Milky Way galaxy. In the 1950s, the problem children were identified.

Artist's impression of a quasar in galactic dust
Credit: NASA/ESA/G.Bacon, STScI (usage does not imply endorsement of site contents)

Quasars are thought to be the very bright and "loud" part of some galaxies, probably caused by black holes in the center. These things have been baffling for a mighty long time, and problematic for Big Bang cosmology. A newer problem for secular views is that they change their form (including dimming and a change in redshifts). Some scientists think that quasars are "early" galaxies that become more standard later on, but the changes seen do not fit their paradigm. According to cosmic evolution, the changes should take thousands or millions of years, but are happening in extremely short times. This sort of thing fits nicely with biblical creationist views.

Quasars are very high redshift astronomical objects with broad emission line (BEL) spectra. The latter is very different to that in the usual ‘normal’ galaxies. This means the objects’ redshifts and BEL spectra can be used to identify them.

And because of their high redshifts they are assumed to be very distant, very luminous active galaxies with super-massive black holes at their hearts, powering them to emit prodigious amounts of radiation over all wavebands of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Most of the high redshift objects in the universe are quasars. The redshifts of galaxies and quasars when interpreted within big bang cosmology—the greater the redshift the greater the distance—means that the most distant objects are seen at a time when the universe was youngest.

Following big bang thinking, quasars are then considered to be just galaxies in some early stage of development—back closer in time to the big bang—than the usual spiral and elliptical galaxies we might see with much lower redshifts.

To read the rest, click on "Changing-look quasars: how do they fit into a biblical creationist model?"