Does the the doppler effect work on light. And what effects would we see, if it does work?

Post edited at 12:25 am on Jan. 8, 2007 by Rollo Tomasi

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Post edited at 12:25 am on Jan. 8, 2007 by gloryholeguillotine

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Post edited at 12:27 am on Jan. 8, 2007 by speedy66

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Red shift and blue shift aren't really the Doppler effect, though they're comparable.
Wavelengths of light are distorted if the object emitting the light is accelerating either away or toward us.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it travelling to or from the observer, not merely accelerating?

The answer is basically that it's not strictly called 'the Doppler effect', which is restricted to the realm of sound waves. But yes, it does happen. Objects travelling away from you will have their waveforms elongated, making them redder (or 'redshifting' them). Objects travelling towards you will have their waveforms compressed, making them bluer (or 'blueshifting' them). I'm going to presume you know how the frequency of light waves (which is, to a great extent, dependant on the wavelength of the light wave) determines the colour of the wave.

In any event, as the speed of light is so high, the end result is that an object has to be travelling pretty fothermucking fast to be noticeably red- or blueshifted.

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Routinely sucking the cosmic fugue off our fingers.

As an object approaches the speed of light, the light being reflected or emitted by it will appear bluer as the object approaches you, and redder as it passes you.  Also, if you were sitting on the accelerating object, you would see the scenery in front of you as being more blue than normal, and the scenery behind you as being more red than usual.  This is called a relativistic Doppler shift.

In this picture, the object is travelling at a top speed of .89c in a horizontal line.  This is a great picture, as it illustrates both the color changes due to relativistic Doppler shift and the change in what the traveler sees as "straight lines".  The latter effect is known as a Lorentz contraction.

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