When we see a galaxy and a quasar near each other in the sky, it might be because they are really near each other, or it might be that they are... » More

When we see a galaxy and a quasar near each other in the sky, it might be because they are really near each other, or it might be that they are far apart and just along the same line of sight. Tests performed by Alan Stockton (Astrophysical Journal 223:747-757, "The Nature of QSO Redshifts", 1978) on a sample of such pairs have shown that some galaxy-quasar pairs have the same redshift and so are accepted as being at the same distance. Other pairs with very different redshifts however have been found by G Burbidge, A Hewitt, J V Narlikar and P Das Gupta (Astrophysical Journal supplementary series "Associations between Quasi-stellar Objects and Galaxies", 1990) to have a peculiar relationship that shows that they really are associated with each other and not just along a line of sight, so destroying the redshift as a reliable indicator. The relationship is that the galaxy-quasar angular spacing diminishes with the increasing galaxy redshift exactly as it should for real associated pairs at a spacing about equal to the spacing between the milky way and our companions the Magellanic clouds. There is no way that these results can be explained by the big bang model where the vast bulk of the redshift must be cosmological in origin - i.e due to velocity of expansion of the Universe.

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