Related papers: Pending problems in QSOs
Quasars have reigned as the most luminous and distant objects in the Universe. These concepts were based on the hypothesis that the redshifts of quasars are obeying the Hubble low. This hypothesis has little serious competition today, but…
In the now well established conventional view (see Rees [1] and references therein), quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) and related active galactic nuclei (AGN) phenomena are explained as the result of accretion of plasma onto giant black holes…
Quasars (QSOs) are extremely luminous active galatic nuclei currently observed up to redshift $z=7.642$. As such, they have the potential to be the next rung of the cosmic distance ladder beyond SNe Ia, if they can reliably be used as…
Quasars, as the most luminous persistent sources in the Universe, have broad applications for cosmological studies. In particular, they can be employed to directly measure the expansion history of the Universe, similarly to SNe Ia. The…
The large observed redshift of quasars has suggested large cosmological distances and a corresponding enormous energy output to explain the brightness or luminosity as seen at earth. Alternative or complementary sources of redshift have not…
Quasar (or QSO) elemental abundances provide unique probes of high-redshift star formation and galaxy evolution. There is growing evidence from both the emission and intrinsic absorption lines that QSO environments have roughly solar or…
In contradiction to the simple AGN unification schemes, there exists a significant population of broad line, z~2 QSOs which have heavily absorbed X-ray spectra. These objects have luminosities and redshifts characteristic of the sources…
Recent results have questioned the description of the QSO luminosity function in terms of a pure luminosity evolution and call for a luminosity dependent luminosity evolution. Measurements of the QSO clustering amplitude and evolution allow…
It is pointed out that there are now known four very close pairs of QSOs with separations < 5 arcsec and very different redshifts. Several estimates of the probability that they are accidental configurations range between 10^{-7} and 3.5 x…
Quasars continue to be the most luminous objects known in the universe but are now rivaled by galaxies for having the largest redshifts. I review current techniques for finding quasars at z > 5 and the status of current optical surveys. I…
Many of the conditions that are necessary for starbursts appear to be important in the triggering of QSOs. However, it is still debatable whether starbursts are ubiquitously present in galaxies harboring QSOs. In this paper we review our…
(Abridged:) The paradox of apparent optical associations of galaxies with very different redshifts, the so-called anomalous redshift problem, is around 35 years old, but is still without a clear solution and is surprisingly ignored by most…
This review presents the current state of work on QSO hosts and companions at redshifts above 1. This includes the properties of QSO host galaxies, such as size, scale length, and luminosity, and morphology, as they appear to change with…
I will review some results of observational cosmology which critically cast doubt upon the foundations of the standard cosmology: 1) The redshifts of the galaxies are due to the expansion of the Universe; 2) The cosmic microwave background…
This review attempts to describe developments in the fields of quasar and quasar host galaxies in the past five. In this time period, the Sloan and 2dF quasar surveys have added several tens of thousands of quasars, with Sloan quasars being…
The QSO lifetime t_Q is one of the most fundamental quantities for understanding black hole and QSO evolution, yet it remains uncertain by several orders of magnitude. If t_Q is long, then only a small fraction of galaxies went through a…
The heavy elements near QSOs provide unique measures of the star formation and chemical evolution in young galactic nuclei or pre-galactic condensations. Studies of quasar abundances also naturally address a variety of questions regarding…
I recall how the discovery of quasars occurred more than forty years ago, and the strong debates marking out their story. It led to the discovery of Massive Black Holes, which are now known to be present in almost all galaxies, and it…
QSOs and radio-galaxies, together with the CMB, ``normal'' galaxies and clusters, represent the main source of information about the origin and evolution of the Large Scale Structure. They can be used either directly, as tracers of the…
Half a century after their discovery, the study of quasars remains one of the most fascinating intellectual challenges in astronomy. Quasars are laboratories for everything from relativity to magnetohydrodynamics and are perhaps the best…