Abstract
Recently, Edmunds and George1 discussed alignments of randomly distributed quasars, following the discovery by Arp and Hazard2 of several conspicuously aligned ‘triplets’ of quasars with widely disparate redshifts. If the probability of such alignments occurring by chance is very small, a physical association between the objects could be suspected2, implying a non-cosmological component in some of the quasar redshifts. A similar problem concerning supposed alignments of megalithic sites3 has prompted substantial analysis of the statistics of such colinearities in random sets of objects3,4. Here I use the angular definition of alignment to estimate the significance of the quasar triplets and confirm the results of computer simulations1, showing that it is not improbable for these alignments to occur by chance.
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References
Edmunds, M. G. & George, G. H. Nature 290, 481–483 (1981).
Arp, H. C. & Hazard, C. Astrophys. J. 240, 726–736 (1980).
Broadbent, S. R. J. R. statist. Soc. A143, 109–140 (1980).
Kendall, D. G. & Kendall, W. S. Adv. appl. Prob. 12, 380–424 (1980).
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Zuiderwijk, E. Alignment of randomly distributed objects. Nature 295, 577–578 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1038/295577a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/295577a0
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