BrotherBrutha t1_jcoa5jh wrote
Reply to comment by RecognitionUnfair500 in Where do photons go if they've been emitted but are destined to never be absorbed, and would these photons traveling ad infinitum define the edge of the universe (even if space itself were still larger)? by mysteryofthefieryeye
>Nothing is intrinsically happening to the energy of the photon.
I think that's my point: the energy of the photon really is reducing (in the case of a cosmological redshift, not a doppler one).
From here :
>Question:.... If light is redshifted in an expanding universe, and this results in photons losing energy, where does that energy go to?
​
>Answer:
..... The short answer, though, is that light loses energy as the Universe expands, and that energy goes into the expansion of the Universe itself, in the form of work.
RecognitionUnfair500 t1_jcpvyqg wrote
That is false, and is a violation of the conservation of energy. And you seem to be contradicting yourself as well about the change of the energy of the photon
BrotherBrutha t1_jcpyji9 wrote
It’s not just random blogs that say this though; I’m doing the online ANU EDX astrophysics course at the minute, and it was exactly the explanation they gave (one of the presenters is a Nobel prize winner, so I feel like it’s reasonably trustworthy!). And there are many places that give the same description.
Of course, I appreciate it may not necessarily be the full story, but it at least seems to be more than a daft idea!
RecognitionUnfair500 t1_jcq3mmq wrote
Is there a chance you may have misunderstood what the presenter said?
BrotherBrutha t1_jcq4loj wrote
I don’t think so, it was pretty specific. And it matches the answer given in the NRAO link I gave above.
Of course, I could be wrong!
Edit: is it possible that the physics can be interpreted in a bunch of different ways, and some will describe as I have, and some as you’ve done? Perhaps it’s just different conventions in Cosmology vs straight physics?
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