Jerry was sitting down for breakfast one morning when he was astonished to see in the paper an announcment of his own death.
He called his friend at once, "Jim, have you seen the announcement of my death in the paper?"
Jim replied, "Yes, and exactly where are you calling from?"
QuasarIn 1962, a lunar occultation on August 5 enabled Australian radio astronomers to more precisely fix the location of the previously known radio source 3C 273, in Virgo. In 1963 this became the first member of a new class of object eventually to be called quasars or "quasi-stellar radio sources." Maarten Schmidt, using the Hale optical telescope, saw it as a faint star-like object with a visible jet. Its spectrum featured unusual emission lines, which he identified as ordinary hydrogen lines shifted toward longer wavelengths (redshifted) by 16%. If the shift is due to velocity, it is moving away at one-sixth the speed of light and one of the most distant objects visible. Quasars radiate as much energy per second as a hundred or more galaxies. 3C273 is the brightest quasar known. |
