On the Masses of the quasi-stellar objects

If it is assumed that the gas giving rise to the emission and absorption lines in quasi-stellar objects has been driven out of the central object by radiation pressure, arguments based on the dynamics of radiation-driven gas flows enable us to establish limits on the central masses and the rates of mass loss. For QSOs at cosmological distances it is found that the masses of the central objects must lie in the range 5 x 107 M/sub sun/approximately-less-thanMapproximately-less-than2 x 109m/sub sun/ and that the mass loss rates should be M/Mapprox. =10-7 yr-1. If the QSOs are local objects, the upper limits to the masses are about 2 x 107 M/sub sun/