If light traveled far enough, would it get “red-shifted” to the point of no longer being a wave?

465 viewsOtherPhysics

From what I understand, red-shifting is when light from a distant source travels through expanding space which stretches out the wave making it appear more red by the time it reaches earth.

So if a light wave traveled far enough, would it “red-shift” all the way down the EM spectrum eventually losing its waviness and becoming a straight line?

In: Physics

7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

As you look at larger and larger redshifts, the distance increases, and [asymptotes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymptote) at the distance to the edge of the observable universe. At the boundary, the redshift is infinite, which would (according to the definition 1+z=λ/λ0) imply that the observed wavelength is infinite too.

Really what this means is that light from beyond this distance is unobservable, it corresponds to light that hasn’t reached us. The interesting thing would be the extremely high redshifts as you get asymptotically close to the edge of the observable universe, though such light doesn’t exist anyway as the universe was opaque for the first 300k years.

You are viewing 1 out of 7 answers, click here to view all answers.