It next took up residence in quasars, those mysterious sources of tremendous energy at mystifying distances. In 1967, a trio of Cornell theorists published a paper in the Astrophysical Journal examining, as the title said, “Quasi-Stellar Objects in Universes with Non-Zero Cosmological Constant.” They were trying to resolve some possible inconsistencies in the behavior of quasars. But as the understanding of the evolution of quasars became clearer, the need for lambda again receded. Then in 1975 two prominent astronomers argued in Nature that studies of elliptical galaxies as standard candles
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