Redshift, Galaxies, and Light

[tdmikey]

For the past month, I have been listening to the 96 lecture series on Understanding the Universe by Alex Filippenko. A couple of questions popped into mind while I was listening to Lecture 72 Expansion of the Universe and the Big Bang.

Is it possible that Light photons, has a half life of so many light years, thus losing, for a lack of better term, power or energy. Shifting it into the red-shift? Thus the universe is not as big as we think. Or we will never be able to see everything with light losing all energy at about 12-14b LY.

It may be the same thing as tired light but I am not 100% sure on both the terminologies.

Could it be possible that the more "dark matter" and "dark energy" that is in between us and another galaxy makes the light shift to the red. I guess what I am trying to say is that Dark Matter/Energy shifts the photons over to the red side and not so much the distance. Distance may play a factor but Dark Matter/Energy plays more of a contribution. Could it be possible that the Andromeda Galaxy is not 2.5 Million light years away but 250,000 LY away?

I understand that these two main questions contradict each other. But just trying to think outside the box.

My understanding of stars is the more energetic the star the different color of light you have coming from it. The color going from, Blue, White, Yellow, to Red and everything in between. Thus if the light has lost a lot of energy due to life span it will shift all the way to the red and eventually die like a dwarf star at the end of its life. A very close galaxy (andromeda) could be blue shifted due to the light having alot of energy still. Or on the contradiction question if Dark Matter/Energy can strip away energy from light it can move it to the Red shift, thus making it seem more distant.

I am starting to confuse myself now. So I will leave it at that.

Sorry if these are elementary physics questions. Been a self taught individual for about 3 years now. Still very intrigued by Astrophysics and Quantum physics.

Thank you ahead of time for your insight.

Mike

 

[SpeedFreek]

The "tired light" concepts you are describing are well known and have been examined - there are problems with them. But well done for thinking of them by yourself, you are in good company!

If a certain type of supernova lasts a certain length of time, the further away that supernova happened, the longer the event should seem to us. This is predicted with an expanding universe, it is as if the light is "stretched" by the expansion, but there are no "tired light" theories that have a mechanism for time-dilation. Why would a "train" of photons get further apart from each other, if the universe was not expanding as they travelled through it?

What else could gradually increase the distance between all the photons in a "packet" of photons? As you think about this, consider that if the first two photons are moved apart by one unit, the distance between the 1st and 3rd photons increases by 2 units and so on. The mechanism cannot simply delay each photon by the same amount, otherwise they would still be the same distance apart afterwards!

Also, there is the issue of scattering, as the photons essentially have to interact with something in order to lose that energy.

Have a look here:

Errors in Tired Light Cosmology

 

[derekmcd]

Is it possible that Light photons, has a half life of so many light years, thus losing, for a lack of better term, power or energy. Shifting it into the red-shift? Thus the universe is not as big as we think. Or we will never be able to see everything with light losing all energy at about 12-14b LY.

Photons can not have a half-life. They have no inertial reference frame in which to experience time (rate of change).