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Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 42: Nov-Dec 1985 |
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A Large Quasar Inhomogeneity In The Sky
"In an area roughly 20� x 70� on the sky, there exists an excess of bright, high-redshift quasars. Quasars with this distribution of apparent magnitude and redshift have a negligible chance of being drawn from the population of quasars present in other areas of the sky. At a mean redshift distance corresponding to their average z = 2, these quasars would represent an unprecedented inhomogeneity over enormous volumes of space in the universe."
It is difficult for astronomers to accept such a large "bubble" in the cosmos, because the Big Bang Theory basically produces a "smooth" universe. The author of this paper, H. Arp, comments that the size of the inhomogeneity could be shrunk considerably if redshifts were not taken as measures of distance.
(Arp, Halton; "A Large Quasar Inhomogeneity in the Sky," Astrophysical Journal, 277:L27, 1984.)