Faster-than-light motion in quasars

Abstract

Over the past fifteen years, observations of some quasars with the techniques of very-long-baseline interferometry have shown that the angular separation between pairs of radio-emitting regions in their cores is increasing year after year. If the quasars are indeed as far away as implied by Hubble’s law, then these angular motions translate into linear speeds several times the speed of light. Several theoretical scenarios have been proposed to show that the observed motions are illusory. The leading contender in this field—the relativistic beam model—and an alternative offered by the concept of a gravitational screen are described and compared in the light of recent observational data.