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Discovery that quasars don’t show time dilation mystifies astronomers
- gjm11 17y agoThere's a little discussion at http://physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=2666411 http://physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=2666411 where someone going by the name "Vanadium 50", apparently a moderator there, says: "You're seeing some bad, bad reporting here. [...] I don't have access to the latest Hawkins paper, but what he does not do is look at a particular feature (e.g. a SN light curve) and show it does not appear more slowly in distant QSO's, but he lumps together all optical variations, does a Fourier transform and shows that the ensemble appears independent of distance. This is a much more complicated measurement, and it is much more difficult to interpret easily. [...] Any sort of one line conclusion like "QSOs don't exhibit time dilation" is oversimplistic." This, plus my impression that every time I've seen a PhysOrg link on HN it's been sensationalized at best, inclines me to wait for more detailed information from more obviously-reliable sources before jumping to any conclusions.
- gjm11 17y agoEarlier brief article by the same author: http://iopscience.iop.org/1538-4357/553/2/L97/fulltext http://iopscience.iop.org/1538-4357/553/2/L97/fulltext . I don't know what's new in his latest; it seems to be qualitatively similar.