Word: distant
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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NASA's assumption was based on OAO-II's report of unexpectedly powerful ultraviolet radiation from half a dozen nearby galaxies. If this is true, NASA scientists reasoned, distant galaxies probably give off large amounts of the same invisible radiation. But those galaxies are receding from the earth (because of the expansion of the universe) at speeds that would cause ultraviolet light to shift toward the red end of the spectrum into visible frequencies. So the NASA men assumed the visible light from distant galaxies is intrinsically brighter than previously believed; therefore those galaxies must be farther away...
Pure Chauvinism. Last week leading cosmologists caustically deflated NASA's universe. "I don't believe a word of it," snapped Caltech's Maarten Schmidt, who in 1963 identified quasars as the most distant objects ever seen by man. "A bunch of nonsense," said Mount Palomar Astronomer Allan Sandage. "It's pure chauvinism." Astrophysicist A. G. W. Cameron of NASA's own Goddard Institute for Space Studies was equally blunt: "This strikes me as a complete misunderstanding...
...critics pointed out, ultraviolet radiation accounts for no more than a tenth of thz radiation from a galaxy. Thus, even a large increase in this component would not greatly affect a galaxy's overall brightness. Besides, modern astronomers always compensate for the "red shift" of light when viewing distant galaxies and quasars...
There are other compelling objections to NASA's announcement. Most modern astronomers are confident that the technical yardstick by which they measure distant galaxies and quasars-the red shift of light from those bodies-is reasonably accurate. And by that measure, the most distant quasar so far observed by astronomers is about 8 billion light-years away. Furthermore, in the complex Einsteinian geometry of space, diameter is a naive measurement; normal concepts of shape are meaningless. Astronomers were also nettled by the way that NASA released its information. Ignoring the scientific community, the space agency has to date published...
...Maarten Schmidt discovers that quasars may be the most distant objects in the universe...