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Superluminal Velocities Observed in Quasars

"So far, the clumsily long name 'quasi-stellar radio sources' is used to describe these objects. Because the nature of these objects is entirely unknown, it is hard to prepare a short, appropriate nomenclature for them so that their essential properties are obvious from their name. For convenience, the abbreviated form 'quasar' will be used throughout this paper" - Hong-Yee Chiu ( Chinese - born 1932  -  , American astrophysicist ) who first coined 'quasar' in Physics Today, May, 1964

Superluminal velocity: The apparent velocity of an object at speeds greater than the speed of light. This illusory appearance of velocity greater than is caused by a "projection effect" by the object's acute angle of motion towards ( almost perpendicular to ) the line-of-sight of an observer on earth.

Quasar ( quasi-stellar radio source ): An extremely luminous object powered by the interaction of a supermassive black hole and its falling accretion disk at the core of a galaxy. Quasars perform gravitational lensing or magnification of earlier light from the Big Bang ( 13.73 light years ago ) as predicted by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity mathematics. Because of their high brightness and extreme distances from earth at the cosmic edges of the known universe, quasars are exhibiting huge amounts of energy at acute angles for line-of-sight radio telescope observers. As a result of these acute angles of extreme distant observations which intersect the line-of-sight on earth at an almost perpendicular or right angle, superluminal velocities are thereby measured contrary to special relativity mathematics.

quasar burst at the center of some galaxy
source: NASA Images

3C 273 Quasar on March 15, 2001: Among the first observed superluminal velocities were the plasma ejecta or blobs thrown off by 3C 273 in 1977 which seemingly contradicted special relativity mathematical physics as to the extreme upper limit of physical velocity, namely the speed of light, .

Geometric derivation of superluminal velocities:

Mathematical solution as to why superluminal velocities are optically illusory: However, superluminal velocities are illusory simply because depends on but depends directly on , which in turn produces a severe distortion in calculating ( or ).

That is, comparing apples with oranges or different spacetime metrics produces superluminal illusions as follows:

For 3C 273 Quasar superluminal velocity is determined as follows:^∗

^∗note : this example is used in the future upcoming Relativity Calculator Mac application

Hypothetical Superluminal Relativity Equations

Bending Light to Cloak Real World Objects

Professor Sir John Pendry, The Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, UK has a background as a theoretical condensed matter physicist and is well known for his work on the structure of surfaces and their interaction with electrons and photons.

§ References:

1.)    "Possibility of Faster-Than-Light Particles", by G. Feinberg, The Rockefeller University, New York, New York, (Received 20 February 1967), available Physical Review, Vol. 159, Number 5, 25 July 1967

2.)    Symposia on Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, conducted by E.C.G. Sudarshan, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, 1970

3.)    "Superluminal motion in the quasar 3C273", especially Section 1.4, pages 7 & 8, equations 1.27 to 1.29, excerpted from "Gravitational Radiation, Luminous Black Holes and Gamma-Ray Burst Supernovae",

©2006, by Maurice H. P. M. van Putten, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge University Press

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