1. Introduction. 2. Ejection of quasars from low redshift galaxies

Transcription

1 J. Astrophys. Astr. (1997) 18, Quasar Creation and Evolution into Galaxies Halton Arp, Max-Planck-Institut fuer Astrophysik Garching, Germany Abstract. Building on evidence starting from 1966, X-ray observations have once again confirmed the association of quasars with low redshift galaxies. Enough examples of quasar-like objects ejected in opposite directions from nearby, active galaxies have accumulated so that an empirical evolutionary sequence can be outlined. The quasars start out with low luminosity and high (z > 2) redshift. As they travel away from their galaxy of origin they grow in size and decay in redshift. The redshifts drop in steps and near the quantized values of z = 0.6, 0.3, and 0.06 the quasars become particularly active, ejecting or breaking up into many objects which evolve finally into groups and clusters of galaxies. The observations massively violate the assumptions of the Big Bang and require continuous, episodic creation in a non expanding universe of indefinitely large size and age. Key words. Quasars redshifts galaxies evolution. 1. Introduction In 1966 it was shown that radio sources ejected from disturbed galaxies in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies contained a number of much higher redshift quasars. Later associations of quasars were found with companion galaxies to larger galaxies. The companions tended to be more active and contain a larger component of young stars and the statistical association of quasars with them reached the astonishing level of 16 sigma. (See for review Arp 1987). Fig. 1 shows a pair of radio quasars discovered in 1968 across a disturbed companion where the redshifts later turned out to be, an improbable by accident, z = 0.62 and Ejection of quasars from low redshift galaxies With the advent of satellite X-ray telescopes quasars became much easier to discover because they represented the majority of point sources mapped at these high energies. In addition there was a class of galaxies called Seyferts with nuclei which showed the same kind of excited, energetic spectra as quasars and which were also very strong X-ray sources. In the course of observing these Seyfert galaxies, particularly the German X-ray telescope ROSAT built up an archive of observations which encompassed a field of almost one degree radius around each Seyfert. Around this rather complete sample of bright Seyferts it was possible to catalogue an excess of bright X-ray quasar candidates that was visually striking and significant 393

2 394 Halton Arp Figure 1. The two strongest radio sources in the pictured area fall across the disturbed spiral galaxy IC1767. The redshifts of these radio quasars at z = 0.62 and 0.67 are so close as to insure their physical relation. This pair, published in 1968, established quasars to be in the class of radio sources ejected in opposite directions from active galaxies. at the more than 7.4 sigma level (Radecke 1997). Among this sample of 26 Seyferts more than a dozen had conspicuous pairs of X-ray emitting, blue stellar objects (BSO s). Among the 53 BSO s in these pairs a number were already known to be quasars and the rest essentially only await the measurement of their redshifts (Arp 1997). In addition to the statistical proof of physical association there was, of course, the striking pairing of quasars across the active Seyferts, pairs which were too accurately aligned and spaced and with such similarity of properties as to preclude their being accidental projections of background objects. A few examples of such X-ray pairings are shown here in Figs. 2, 3 and 4. Already this tells us that the Seyferts as a class, which are known to be ejecting material, are ejecting these X-ray emitting quasars. Ejection of radio synchrotron emitting material from active galaxies was already an accepted fact from the 1950s and, of course, we had examples of radio quasars ejected from disturbed galaxies from 1966 onward. 3. What do quasars evolve into? Inspection of just the four examples of pairings given so far reveal a pattern which can be substantiated by reference to many other cases. The pattern is that when the quasars are closely spaced across the ejecting galaxy they tend to be fainter

3 Quasar Creation and Evolution into Galaxies 395 Figure 2. Very strong (268 and 119 cts/ks) X-ray sources across the Seyfert NGC4235. Catalogued identifications as a quasar and a BL Lac object are labeled with redshifts underneath. Plus sign indicates the position of a Seyfert 1 of z = identified previously but not registered in the ROSAT observation. and of higher redshift. (These central galaxies are all approximately at the same distance.) In a case like NGC4235 as shown in Fig. 2, however, the ejecta have moved out to a distance of more than half a degree and have become very bright. The redshifts have also become less, more like normal galaxies. In Fig. 5 we show a schematic representation of what I judge, from all the evidence, to be the empirically suggested evolution of the quasars as they travel outwards. The BL Lacertid phase of the evolution turns out to be a very important stage. A BL Lac is defined as a quasar-like object which is very strong in radio, very strong in X-rays and has a mostly continuous spectrum dominated by synchrotron or bremstrahlung radiation. The similarity between bright radio, X-ray quasars and BL Lac objects is striking and suggests that the latter can rapidly turn into the former from a burst of high energy radiation that swamps the normal quasar emission lines with high energy continuum radiation. That secondary ejection and/or break-up takes place in this phase can be attested to by the smaller X-ray sources found grouped around many of these objects (Arp 1997). The BL Lac pictured in Fig. 2 actually has a pair of BSO candidates across it which await spectrum measurement. BL Lac s also are the first of the quasar-like objects to show signs of an underlying stellar population.

4 396 Figure 3. A pair of strong X-ray sources (38 and 26 cts/ks) across the water maser Seyfert NGC2639 the closest in redshift so far found. Further X-ray BSO candidates, fainter and closer in, are coming NE out of the Seyfert. Figure 4. X-ray map of the water master Seyfert NGC4258. Quasars at z = 0.65 and 0.40 are identified. Sources NNW and SSE not yet optically identified.

5 Quasar Creation and Evolution into Galaxies 397 Figure 5. A schematic diagram incorporating the empirical data for the low redshift central galaxies and the higher redshift quasars and companions. It is suggested that the most evolved companions have relative intrinsic redshifts of only a few hundred km/sec and have fallen back closer to the parent galaxy. 4. 3C345 Finally a cluster of quasars Since extragalactic objects are hierarchically distributed astronomers expected to find clusters and groups of quasars. When they did not, they characteristically put this difficulty out of their mind. Actually groups of quasars were found (Arp 1987 p. 64) but they had a wider spread in redshift than could be conventionally accepted. But Fig. 6 shows what happens when we look at the archived X-ray fields centered on 3C345, a bright, strongly variable radio quasar that was among the first to be discovered. The brightest X-ray object is naturally 3C345 with an X-ray intensity of 365 counts/kilosec. But forming a conspicuously well aligned pair across it are the next two strongest X-ray sources in the field. Both are catalogued quasars of redshift

6 398 Halton Arp Figure 6. The bright, violently variable radio quasar, 3C345, is indicated as having the very strong X-ray intensity of 365 cts/ks. Counts for other quasars in the field are marked to the upper right and optical apparent magnitudes directly beneath. The next two brightest X-ray quasars are shown as filled circles and define a conspicuous pair across 3C345. similar to 3C345 as shown in Fig. 7. In this respect 3C345 is just like the examples of paired X-ray quasars shown in the first four figures and referred to in the publications. But what is exceptional in this case is the fact that 3C345 is part of an 8 sq. deg. field which had been optically searched for quasars by Crampton et al. (1988). Part of that uniform search is shown in Fig. 7. It is obvious at a glance that an equal sized adjoining field is bereft of quasars and that almost all of the 14 quasars pictured belong to 3C345! To go back to Fig. 6 for a moment we can point out that the next three, strongest and closest X-ray quasars, fall closely along the ejection line defined by the brightest two. This lowers the probability of accidental alignment with 3C345 from 4 in one hundred thousand to 3 in one hundred million. Obviously they have been ejected from the central object as its active, Seyfert-like spectrum would suggest. In Fig. 7 the central radio quasar is labeled HP signifying that it is highly polarized. In addition to strong radio and X-ray emission this is another characteristic of BL Lac objects. So it is clear that 3C345 is some kind of transition between a quasar and a BL

7 Quasar Creation and Evolution into Galaxies 399 Figure 7. Quasars of redshift 0.5 < z < 1.6 in a homogeneously searched area around 3C345 and an equal area to the west. Redshifts are written to the upper right of each quasar. 3C345 is identified HP (for high polarization) and the Seyfert galaxy is marked S1. Lac object. The importance of this comment lies in the fact that 3C345, as earlier concluded about BL Lacs, appears to be in the process of ejecting and breaking up into smaller entities. In turn this is important because it implies that if this process continues, over time we will develop an increasingly rich cluster of galaxy like objects. 5. The origin of galaxy clusters It is noticeable that three of the quasars NE of 3C345 form a tight group with redshifts z = 0.59, 0.70 and This pattern has appeared a number of times in the pairs across Seyferts, i.e. one of the X-ray pairs will be double or triple or the X-ray position will yield two or three BSO quasar candidates (Arp 1997). The preliminary interpretation, consonant with the break up of BL Lac s discussed previously, is that as the outward travelling quasar evolves its subsequent ejections are sometimes blocked by material in the vicinity and the younger, higher redshift products stay irregularly placed in the vicinity. If this is true it helps us to understand the previous observations that the richest quasar groups found had, at maximum, only about six members and they were all of redshift about z = 1, plus or minus a few tenths (Arp 1987, p. 64). Here we are suggesting that they are on their way to evolving into more populous clusters of low redshift galaxies. Notice in Figs. 6 and 7 that there is a square box representing the Seyfert galaxy NGC6212. At only 4.7 arc min distance from 3C345 it would be unlikely to be a

8 400 Halton Arp chance placement and would represent, from all the foregoing evidence, the origin of 3C345. As the subdivision of the quasars continues, and as the redshifts decay with time, the 3C345 cluster of quasars would then be predicted to turn into a normal cluster of galaxies with NGC6212 becoming one of the larger, older, slightly lower redshift galaxies near the center (the higher redshifts decay more rapidly with time than the lower). 6. Quantization of redshifts Since 1967 when Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge noticed the prevalence of quasars of redshift z = 1.95, the evidence for preferred values of quasar redshifts has been growing. In 1971 K. G. Karlsson showed that the observed redshift peaks obeyed the formula (1 + z) = 1.23 n ; z = 0.061, 0.30, 0.60, 0.96, 1.41, 1.96 etc. This sequence was verified by many investigators (see egs. Arp et al. 1990). If we were to interpret this observational data on the current expanding universe theory we would have to conclude that the quasars were distributed in shells expanding away from us symmetrically m every direction. This consequence has been considered so devastating to the Big Bang that most scientists have consciously chosen to deny or ignore the observations! We show here only two previously unpublished examples of the observations of this redshift periodicity. Ironically the quasars depicted in Fig. 8 were measured in Figure 8. In searching for nearby blue stars Willem Luyten found 40 objects which later turned out to be quasars. The distribution of their redshifts shows conspicuously the peaks predicted by Karlsson formula.

9 Quasar Creation and Evolution into Galaxies 401 Figure 9. All catalogued BL Lac objects (Veron and Veron 1995). Bins are +/ 0.1z (to allow for observed ejection velocities) and with three major redshift peaks marked. search for nearby blue dwarf stars by Willem Luyten before quasars had ever been discover ed. Later when they turned out to be quasars they showed the redshift periodicity amazingly well although, to my knowledge, this is the first time the plot has been published. In another new test, Fig. 9 shows the redshift distribution of all presently catalogued BL Lac objects. As remarked before, BL Lac s are an especially active type of quasar so this is an independent verification of the periodicity. But then this same periodicity has been verified for radio quasars, X-ray quasars and even field galaxies and X-ray clusters. It is interesting to note that the bins are naturally about 0.1c wide which is just about the measured ejection velocity for the average quasar. In other words the quantized redshift values could follow quite accurately the formula with their spread from those values being due to the plus and minus ejection speeds. The observations require, however, that the red shifts be intrinsic and quantized in discrete values two properties that irreconcilably violate the fundamental assumption about redshift upon which extragalactic astronomy rests. 7. Arp/Hazard groups and triplets The empirical results on quantization can be used, however, to make sense of some previously very puzzling observations on groups of quasars. One of these results came up in 1979 and is shown in Fig. 10. These quasars are called the Arp/Hazard triplets and show a fairly bright quasar of redshift somewhat greater than z = 0.5 with much higher redshift quasars aligned exactly across it in each case (Arp & Hazard 1980). Of course, regardless of the explanation, this is unavoidable evidence that extragalactic objects of much different redshift are physically associated and that redshifts are not a measure of velocity or distance. As if nature knew that astronomers were very slow about grasping reality, the configuration is repeated almost exactly, and placed again immediately next to the the original!

10 402 Halton Arp Figure 10. The Arp/Hazard triplets are pictured with the measured redshifts written to the right of each quasar. In the box to the right are written the nearest intrinsic redshift peaks and the velocity components in z which are required to balance the ejections. But with the developments in the understanding of ejection and quantization of intrinsic redshift it is now possible to interpret the triplets more satisfactorily. Notice that the high redshift quasars are within about 0.2z of the strong quantization peak z = The side bar in Fig. 10 shows that if these quasars were ejected toward and away from the central quasar with delta z s of this amount that the observed values of the paired quasars would result (At these z s a calculation of the ejection velocity would again yield about 0.1c.) As the sidebar also indicates, a modest velocity of the whole system would then enable the central quasars to be at the quantized value of z = 0.60 and the pairs to be ejected symmetrically. The central quasar in each case is quite bright in apparent magnitude, and one is a strong radio source. They are quite like the BL Lac s which have been found now to eject higher redshift quasars. In this case the ejection appears to be quite recent, the quasars quite young and the intrinsic redshifts quite high. But then the question arises, is there a nearby, lower redshift galaxy from which the two, bright ejecting quasars could have originated? Before we answer that, however, we should consider another extaordinary group of quasars discovered in the same 6 6 degree schmidt telescope field by Cyril Hazard.

11 Quasar Creation and Evolution into Galaxies 403 Figure 11. Redshift of all quasars found in rich group by Arp and Hazard on the same objective prism plate as the triplets in Fig 10. Fig. 11 shows Arp/Hazard , a group of 6 to 8 quasars which were so conspicuous that theorists tried to explain them as a gravitational lensing phenomenon. When that failed because of the unbelievably large mass required the group was forgotten. But it is the same as a few other groups of quasars known at the time some brighter quasars at z = 1 or below and a few fainter, higher redshift quasars. The question was whether there was any significance to this group s occurrence on the same plate as the triplets? The answer is shown in Fig. 12. In the area of sky plotted there is one Catalogued Seyfert galaxy and it falls approximately between the two Arp/Hazard groups. But this is not an ordinary Seyfert galaxy. In an all sky survey of infrared luminous, star burst galaxies which were also strong X-ray sources, 13 galaxies were found to be Seyferts which were exceptionally luminous in X-rays (Moran et al. 1994). NGC3822 was found to be one of these exceptional Seyferts and this is the galaxy that falls between the two extraordinary Arp/Hazard groups in Fig. 12! Only the lower redshift members of the Arp/Hazard groups have been plotted in Fig. 12 and it is instructive to compare the configuration with the quasars emanating from 3C345 in Fig. 7. There is a group of quasars just NE of 3C345 which we concluded was ejected from the active BL Lac like object and was breaking up into redshifts of z = 0.59, 0.70 and In Fig. 12 it looks like the eastern group is at intrinsic z = 0.96 with velocity components +/ 0.1z and a systematic velocity of about +0.05z. The higher z quasars shown in Fig. 11 are further out with slightly higher ejection Z s. The western triplets can be interpreted as being centered on quasars of intrinsic redshift z = 0.60 with a systematic velocity between 0.75z and 0.03z.

12 404 Figure 12. The area of the sky in which the very unusual Arp/Hazard group and triplets are found. Only redshifts less than z = 1.6 are plotted. The central identifies one of the 13 most luminous X-ray Seyferts known over the whole sky. Open circles identify members of the NGC3869 group (Nilsen 1973; Uppsala General Catalogue of Galaxies). Figure 13. The strong X-ray galaxy cluster Abell 85. Individual galaxies are plotted as a function of their redshift and distance from the cluster center (Durret et al. 1996).

13 Quasar Creation and Evolution into Galaxies 405 It is significant to note that the putative Seyfert of origin of the two Arp/Hazard groups, NGC3822, is in a fairly rich cluster of NGC galaxies. That means that there are a number of candidates for the origin of the Seyfert. It would be important to measure the redshifts of the other galaxies in this cluster to see whether the Seyfert has a higher, or slightly higher redshift than the mean of the cluster. In any case this seems to be a case of new clusters (the quasar groups) emerging from an old cluster of galaxies. As time goes on and the redshifts decay and come closer together one might expect linked strings of clusters across the sky as many galaxy cataloguers have indeed found. 8. A crucial test If clusters of quasars evolve into clusters of galaxies the critical test of this hypothesis would be to see the quantization of the quasar redshifts repeat in the quantization of the galaxy redshifts! Luckily we have the extensive measures of galaxies in the cluster Abell 85 shown in Fig. 13. The discretely larger redshifts of the galaxies in this cluster cannot be attributed to background sheets and filaments of galaxies because the galaxies are concentrated toward the center of the cluster. A good comparison can be made to the highest and lowest redshift galaxies which are much less concentrated to the center of the cluster than the first few higher steps in redshift which belong to the cluster. This would certainly be a critical prediction of the hypothesis that groups of quasars evolve into clusters of galaxies. The higher redshifts evolve to lower, and necessarily the quantized redshift steps become smaller. With the continuity of physical properties between quasars and galaxies it would be hard to escape the conclusion that this is the explanation for the ubiquitous, systematically higher redshifts and their quantized steps found in all tests of companion galaxies and fainter galaxies in clusters. It is also impressive to note that the cluster Abell 85 is a very strong X-ray emitter and at z = 0.055, essentially at the first quantized quasar redshift peak of z = This would conform to the expectation of an X-ray strong group of quasars at the quantized value of z = 0.30 breaking up and evolving to the next lower step at z = Evolution through resonant states In the theory which I intend to mention briefly in the Panel Discussion, I will show how the particle masses of newly created matter need to be near zero. As time passes they gain mass in a Machian communication with other particle masses within a horizon expanding with the speed of light. As the electron which transitions orbits and emits a photon grows in mass, the photon redshift goes from initially very high to lower values as a quadratic function of time. Whatever determines the values of the quantized redshifts, if the matter evolves and gains mass it must pass rapidly between, say redshifts of z = 0.30 and Otherwise we would observe more intrinsic redshifts between these values. So I would call these preferred redshifts resonant values. Regardless of what one calls

14 406 Halton Arp them, however, the important practical aspect is that particle masses in one state have to pass relatively rapidly to a state of higher masses. That must inject a rapid step up in energy, and would be a natural explanation for why BL Lacs, for example, rapidly flare up in bursts of very luminous radio, X-ray and continuum emissions. It would also suggest a reason why the BL Lacs and quasars near these redshifts eject and break up into smaller parts. 10. Epilogue No matter how interesting the possible theoretical explanations for the observations may be, it is clear that the nature of the redshift is the crucial issue. Since science by operational definition is observational, the many observations which invalidate the assumption that extragalactic redshifts are principally caused by recession velocities must be faced. The consequences of this basic step are enormous, requiring astronomers to admit that the theory of the last 75 years has been built on a false assumption. The alternative of trying to cover up and ignore the evidence, however, is even more horrendous. 11. Discussion Q. Are any ejected objects double radio sources? A. Some are radio sources. I have not studied their morphology in detail. Q. Does any of your radio-loud ejected objects show a radio trail pointing towards the parent galaxy? A. I don t know about radio tails but there are some X-ray tails and even more cases of lines of X-ray sources pointing back to the ejecting galaxy. References Arp, H. 1987, Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies, Interstellar Media. Arp, H. et al. 1990, Astron. Astrophys., 239, 33. Arp, H. 1997, Astron. Astrophys., 319, 33. Arp, H., Hazard, C. 1980, Astrophys. J., 240, 726. Crampton, D., Cowley, A. P., Schmidtke, A. P. et al. 1988, Astr. J., 96, 816. Durret, F., Fellenbok, P., Gerbal, D. et al. 1996, ESO Messenger, 84, 20. Moran, E. C., Halpern, J. P., Helfand, D. J. 1994, Astrophys. J., 433, L65. Radecke, H.-D. 1997, Astr. Astrophys., 319, 18.