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
Red shift is when the source of the wave is moving away from the receiver, so there is a physical change in the distance between the peaks and troughs of the waveform.
A higher frequency of light becomes more blue, and a lower frequency is more red.
The light is still considered to be coming in at the same speed, because it is a continuous wave of particles, but the swing from the “highest” to “lowest’ points take a longer time.
With a high enough speed, theoretically, the frequency of light could be so low that you receive individual photons, instead of a continuous wave, but each of those photons is still travelling at the speed of light. But that speed would be incredible, relativistic speeds.
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