On Thursday 26 May 2011, Levi Pearson wrote: > On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 2:40 PM, Jason Van Patten <[email protected]> wrote: > > However it is theoretically possible to establish a context from the > > center of existence if you assume that such a point exists. > > You might think so, but by calculating the doppler shift in the light > coming from stars in any direction from the Earth, we know that they > are all red-shifted roughly the same amount.
No, this is not true. The further away astronomers look into space (time), the more red-shifted objects appear to be. However, in the local area, you can have objects which appear blue-shifted (example: Andromeda Galaxy). This is because in the local area, Doppler shifts of light due to relative motion are dominate over the cosmological redshift due to the expansion of the universe. However once you get much further away, there is a larger cosmological redshift and Doppler shifts of light due to relative motion are negligible. /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
