The conventional view of quasars is that they are normal galaxies which have, for some reason, superluminous nuclei which enable them to be seen at great distances in the universe. But if quasars really were these kinds of galaxies, we should expect to see them clumping into the clusters or superclusters that characterize the distribution of galaxies on the largest scales. Attempts have been made to relate some quasars with faint, adjacent galaxies of the same redshift. But no conspicuous clusters are evident. Moreover, it is completely clear that we do not see clusters or groups of quasars all having closely the same redshift. The conclusion forced on the conventional believers is that quasars are so rare that we seldom see a cluster of galaxies with one; that is, far less than one quasar exists per average supercluster.

But if we look around the quasars we do see, to a faint enough level, we should see the galaxies that accompany them in their clusters and superclusters. Wide-field Schmidt telescopes, since the invention of high-detectivity emulsions, can routinely register galaxies to a limiting apparent magnitude fainter than 23. That corresponds to a redshift for a normal galaxy of at least z ≈ 0.5.

We should be able to easily see faint, rich clusters of galaxies around quasars out to this redshift and beyond. We do not. (You can believe that if we did we would have heard an enormous amount about it!) Clearly, this is an outstanding violation of the cosmological assumptions.