Last year in this journal I reported evidence that the cosmological redshift of galaxy light may not indicate that the universe is expanding at all. Results from several cosmological tests favor instead an energy loss mechanism in a basically static universe. (Apeiron, January 1995, pp. 20- 24.) The past year?s research and discoveries have given mainstream cosmologists little consolation for shoring up the crumbling edifice of the standard big bang model. Much of the latest news concerns quasars. Here are the highlights of two of the most significant new findings reported in the series ?Remarkable Papers in the Journals? in the Meta Research Bulletin, for which I serve as editor.
Galaxies are extended objects, the closest of which are clearly resolvable into individual stars. Quasars, by contrast, are generally point-like objects, sometimes visible only to radio telescopes, whose true nature is still debated.
