- #36
ConformalGrpOp
- 50
- 0
Drakkith said:It seems to me that if you stop thinking about light as just photons, and start thinking about light as an EM wave where photons can only be talked about during the interaction of the wave with matter, there is not really a problem. Expansion stretches out the wave as it travels, and every doubling in size of the universe causes the wavelength to double. Where has the energy gone?
I've never understood this idea of the "stretching out" of a light wave as it travels across the ever increasing distances between a source and observer in an expanding universe.
Can't we state that at any local point of observation where the observer's inertial frame is that of the source, the observed wavelength at any such local point of observation anywhere in the universe would be that of the source of propagation? Isnt it the case that the red shift is "observed" because the observer's inertial frame is moving in a direction away from the source, and that the observation of a red shift can always be overcome anywhere in the universe if the observer began moving in an inertial frame that was at rest with that of the source?
If the expanding space effected a dilatation of the light wave as it propagated, wouldn't a distant observer in an inertial frame at rest with respect to the source always see a red shift? In that case, wouldn't such an observer applying Hubble's relation, end up over estimating the distance of the source to the observer's location at the time the light was propagated?