Are There Two Types of Quasars?

Abstract

It has been claimed that associations in the plane of the sky between a few quasars and bright galaxies show a causal connection. Even if we accept for the sake of argument the validity of this statistically based relation, it is still possible to avoid the introduction of any new physical origin for the quasar redshifts. One postulates two types of quasars: Type I, the vast majority of quasars, are highly luminous and cosmologically distant, as shown by their redshifts. The second type, a dwarf branch, are products of a few remarkable explosions in nearby galaxies. We show that this hypothesis is consistent with association and red-shift statistics, maintains the physical unity of categories of objects as well as does the single-type model, and suggests a possible interpretation of such objects as BL Lac and OJ 287. Subject heading: quasi-stellar sources or objects