Quasi-stellar objects, galaxies, and the big-bang

Abstract

This paper has been written in a highly personal vein. It’s a resume of the very modest effort made by the author and his students in understanding some aspects of extragalactic astronomy and astrophysics during the former’s tenure at Pt. Ravishankar Shukla University, Raipur. The opinions and conjectures of the author as well as inferences drawn by him are certainly controversial; they may even be highly biased, and may, ultimately, turnout to be incorrect. Anyway, the paper is a polite apologia of the author.

The paper explores the nature of the redshifts of QSOs, their Hubble diagram, their luminosity and chemical evolution, their role in the evolution of galaxies and the extended nebulosities in which they may be embedded. It discusses a viable mechanism for the production of enormous amount of energy in active galactic nuclei, especially in the QSOs, suggested by the author earlier. It also examines the evolutionary sequence of the extragalactic objects suggested by the author and his students from time to time, gives a brief account of the cause of the Big-Bang suggested by the author earlier, and ends with the author’s role in promoting teaching and research in the Department of Physics of Pt. Ravishankar Shukla University, Raipur.