Questions about Physics, Biology and perspective

[Anomalocaris]

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?

I am not sure what you mean by somethings "scaling in size Relatively due to its speed"  If the thing is the universe, then I believe the wave length of Light traveling in the universe would expand, or red shift, or scale, if you will, in proportion to the expansion of the universe, irrespective of which direction the light, or the emitter of the light,  is going in the universe.    It is also a separate effect from which direction the light, or the emitter of light, is going with respect to an observer. If an object is moving towards the observer, but it is sufficiently far from the observer such that in the time it take for light to reach the observer, the universe would have expanded appreciably, then the color of the light the observer would see is a combination of two effects, blue shifting because the emitter was moving towards the observer, red shifting because the wave length scaled with the size of the universe, and the size of the universe increase between when the light was emitted, and when it was observed.

If the light of something moving near us is blue shifted, then the blue shift would be a function of Both velocity of the emitting body and the direction it is moving.  But because it is near us, light from it need not travel a long time to reach us, and the universe would not have expanded much in the time it takes for the light to travel to us, therefore little of its observed wave length would be due to light wave length scaling with the size of the universe.