Cosmological Redshift and Expansion of Space

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by tvanflandern]Anything diminished by the factor e has lost 63% of its previous magnitude. -|Tom|-
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D'oh! I see what you mean, now. Thank you. I was missing the difference between 36.7 and 100. Apologies for being slow on the uptake!

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Thomas</i>
<br />Energy and momentum are concepts from Classical Mechanics and can not be applied to light<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">In standard physics, E = h * f for light, where h = Planck's constant and f = wave frequency. That's the energy I'm referring to.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">(see my page regarding the Energy and Momentum Conservation Laws in Physics<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">If you have a relevant point to make, make it here. We discourage ads for other web sites. Links to graphics, tables, or other minor items supporting a self-sufficient discussion here are okay. -|Tom|-

Redshift is a measured in the shift of spectral lines to lower frequency than normal. Is there any other redshift property that can be measured such as reduced energy? The use of E=hf is not intended for use on spectral lines is it?-And that is not a measured item. Please, lets not split hairs over how to define this stuff-it bogs down the flow, don't you think?

Well, it seems to me that expansion theories are based primarily on redshift observations, and that seems to be a major flaw to me. Expanding space (making something from nothing) that push galaxies apart just seems absurd. Lilly pads in a pond may move this way, but water as opposed to space, has substance.

My understanding of red shift as it applies to relativity, is that light coming at you is at a higher frequency (tight bandwidth) than light going away from you (longer bandwidth). But in actuality, the frequency of that light never changed. It is only our perception of it coming and going.

But then we can take light, run it through a prism, and it is obvious that the resistance within the prism produces different colors of light; each with a different frequency. So light "can" be affected by obstacles along the route.

So isn't it just our perception of incoming light incorrect? We are basing our observations from our own relative point of view, which obviously is not the point of origin. Therefore I would suspect space is not expanding, Stars are closer than they appear, the BBT is a false fabrication, and gravational forces are constant in the Universe based soley on mass and distance. Whay make it so difficult?

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Jim</i>
<br />The use of E=hf is not intended for use on spectral lines is it?-And that is not a measured item.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">The energy of lightwaves can be a directly measured item, even though it is not measured by spectrographs.

Specifically, Baum and his team measured the energy, frequency, and wavelength (independently) of photons arriving from a high-redshift quasar to test the possibility that their energy violated the E=hf law, or even the possibility that the speed of light (fw=c, where w = wavelength and c = speed of light) might be different for those lightwaves. The results of the experiment showed no differences from the accepted laboratory relationships. -|Tom|-

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Mikey</i>
<br />My understanding of red shift as it applies to relativity, is that light coming at you is at a higher frequency (tight bandwidth) than light going away from you (longer bandwidth). But in actuality, the frequency of that light never changed. It is only our perception of it coming and going.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">The frequency of a given spectral line is one thing in the laboratory, but will be different for astrophysical objects such as stars if the source and the observer have any relative motion in the line of sight. This is not an illusion. It is a real physical effect.

Think of a train whistle. If the train and the listener have a relative motion, the frequency of the whistle will change. It doesn't matter which "moves" and which is "at rest" because all motion is relative.

You might want to adopt the air as an "absolute medium", in which case you can say whether the source or the listener or both moved relative to the medium. But in space, we have no detectable absolute medium, so we must simply factor out the motions we know about (such as Earth's rotation and orbital motion, and our best guess of the Sun's motion around our Galaxy), examine what remains, and attribute any frequency shift to a motion of the source.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">So isn't it just our perception of incoming light incorrect?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">No. The light of distant objects is really frequency-shifted relative to light from nearby objects. Our task is to figure out why.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">I would suspect space is not expanding<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Meta Science would agree with you there, but mainstream science would not.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Stars are closer than they appear<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">No chance of that. The distances to relatively nearby stars are measured directly by triangulation, using the Earth's orbital diameter as a baseline.

Your other conjectures are even more inconsistent with available data. Wishing nature was simpler doesn't make it so. -|Tom|-