Discrepant Redshifts of QSOs in Clusters of Galaxies and a Close QSO Pair

Abstract

Although it is the majority view that QSO redshifts are cosmological in origin and related to distance by Hubble's law, several workers have proposed that QSOs may be more local objects. The strongest direct evidence for the conventional view is provided by observations of a number of QSOs which have been shown to have redshifts (z) which agree to within about 1% with the redshifts of apparently associated clusters of galaxies. These QSO-cluster associations have all been found in searches restricted to QSOs with z < 0.36 since on the cosmological hypothesis it is only for such low values of z that the associated galaxies would be readily visible. But, as Burbidge and O'Dell have pointed out, by assuming at the outset that the redshifts are cosmological these investigations fail to test the non-cosmological hypothesis. For the past several years we have been attempting to carry out a study of QSOs in clusters or groups which would be free from this objection. Although our results are by no means complete, we present here some of our preliminary findings as they seem to be of relevance to the present controversy.

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