English

Redshift and Energy Conservation

General Physics 2007-05-23 v2

Abstract

It has always been considered a serious error to treat the cosmological redshift as a Doppler velocity effect rather than the result of space expansion. It is demonstrated here that in practical terms this is not the case, and that the apparent distance - redshift relation derived from a Doppler interpretation is reasonably consistent with supernova data (though not as good as the standard model with dark energy). The normal Doppler effect is examined in detail and shown to conserve energy as expected. Because of the equivalence between the general relativistic space expansion paradigm and the Doppler effect (as demonstrated) the long-standing problem of energy loss associated with the expansion of the Universe is treated in a similar manner to the normal well-behaved Doppler effect. The mechanism by which energy is conserved with the normal Doppler shift is applied to the cosmological redshift and the energy violation disappears. However, an additional luminosity-dependent recession factor is introduced. The effect on astronomical objects is examined and it is found to add only a small additional redshift to a body generating power by nuclear means but can be very large for objects powered by gravity. A possible connection to the claimed anomalous redshift of quasars is considered.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.physics/0407077,
  title  = {Redshift and Energy Conservation},
  author = {Alasdair Macleod},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:physics/0407077},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

22 Pages, 7 Figures (Changes: Figure 4 altered and conclusions drawn slightly modified. Discrepancies with the modelling of Davis and Lineweaver investigated - Figure 5 added)