Questions about Physics, Biology and perspective
June 21, 2016 at 8:30 pm
(This post was last modified: June 21, 2016 at 8:31 pm by bennyboy.)
Okay I'm sitting here trying to use my imagination and reason to draw inferences about the universe. They are purely speculative, but I hope a couple of our in-house scientists would be willing to shed some light on them-- am I just pulling stupid stuff out of my ass?
1) Red shift
In astrophysics, red shift is taken as a measurement of relative motion-- i.e. moving away. However, I'm curious about whether light can undergo a kind of Lorentz transformation. Now, I know there's only one speed of light, in any frame of reference, BUT it seems to me that if something is scaling in size relatively due to its speed, then the relative wavelegth of light emitted from it would be similarly transformed. In other words, you could get a red or blue shift based on relative velocity of the emitting object without regard to direction. So does a red shift really prove that the universe is "expanding," i.e. that everything is moving away from each other, or could it be that WE are moving relatively slowly compared to the things we are observing?
2) Doppler effect pt. 2
So if something was moving at near the speed of light toward us, I assume it would be blue-shifted. But how much of the blue shift would come from its velocity, rather than its direction? Does the train-passing-by description of the Doppler effect really work for light?
1) Red shift
In astrophysics, red shift is taken as a measurement of relative motion-- i.e. moving away. However, I'm curious about whether light can undergo a kind of Lorentz transformation. Now, I know there's only one speed of light, in any frame of reference, BUT it seems to me that if something is scaling in size relatively due to its speed, then the relative wavelegth of light emitted from it would be similarly transformed. In other words, you could get a red or blue shift based on relative velocity of the emitting object without regard to direction. So does a red shift really prove that the universe is "expanding," i.e. that everything is moving away from each other, or could it be that WE are moving relatively slowly compared to the things we are observing?
2) Doppler effect pt. 2
So if something was moving at near the speed of light toward us, I assume it would be blue-shifted. But how much of the blue shift would come from its velocity, rather than its direction? Does the train-passing-by description of the Doppler effect really work for light?
