Abstract
ATTEMPTS to obtain interesting cosmological information from the study of quasars have been thwarted by the apparent large spread in quasar luminosities so that the conventional Hubble plot produces a scatter diagram1. Several authors2–4 have used an absolute magnitude–redshift diagram to provide a standard candle and hence improved the Hubble diagram. However, little work has apparently been done on using the (M, log z) plot as a cosmological indicator in its own right, in place of the Hubble diagram. It is shown here that although evolution may be zero, the uncertainty in the quasar luminosity function allows an upper limit on the quasar space density.
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STEWART, N., HAWKINS, M. Space density evolution of quasars. Nature 276, 163–165 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1038/276163a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/276163a0
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