While some people might try to tell you that light is subject to the doppler effect, the authors of this article from the November 1932 issue of Modern Mechanix magazine know otherwise. The reality is, after travelling for centuries and centuries to reach earth, the light is tired, and slows down as a result. My theory is the light just wants to stop and smell the roses, seeing how Earth is the only planet around that has roses. Now I can’t confirm that Earth is the only nearby planet with roses, but I’ve got a pretty strong conviction on this.
THAT light rays get tired as they travel for millions of years through space, fritter away a little of themselves century by century and end by changing color so that rays which started as blue ones may finish by becoming red is suggested by scientists. Astronomers have discovered that light rays coming to the earth from the most distant nebulae actually show what is called the “red shift,†which means the light from these nebulae is shifted a little toward the red end of the spectrum. What may be happening is that each tiny bit of each light ray may lose a small fraction of its substance as it moves through space.
As pointed out on the Modern Mechanix web page, the concept of stars moving away from Earth, thereby causing red-shift, was known and used as early as 1868 for measuring the velocity of stars movement away from us. So who knows why these people used this article, as it could already be shown as nonsense at the time.
[tags]Modern Mechanix, Light gets tired, doppler effect, red-shift[/tags]