Are Quasars Manifesting a de Sitter Redshift?

Abstract

In 1929, Edwin Hubble wrote in his classic paper¹ demonstrating a correlation between redshift and distance, “the outstanding feature, however, is the possibility that the velocity-distance relation may represent the de sitter effect….” Since the discovery of quasars more than thirty years ago, many more-or-less plausible explanations for the quasar redshift have been proposed. Although the de Sitter redshift was the first known cosmological redshift, it has not yet been considered as a possible etiology for the redshift of quasars. We address the question, “Is it possible that the quasar redshift is a de sitter redshift?” Perhaps the asymptotic character of a gravitational de sitter redshift² could help explain the quasar phenomenon: objects with high redshifts that appear to be almost as bright as objects with intermediate redshifts. reconsidering the possibility of a nonlinear de sitter redshift-distance relation, we find quasar intrinsic brightness to be rather ordinary. Given a de sitter redshift-distance law, intrinsic brightness is found to be independent of redshift over five orders of magnitude.