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Old 02-July-2008, 11:27 PM
grant hutchison grant hutchison is online now
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Join Date: Jul 2005
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Quote:
Originally Posted by byronm View Post
Can anyone explain why a doppler redshift is the preferred explanation for astronomers?
It isn't. Doppler is used for nearby objects in relative motion; cosmological is used for redshifts generated by the expansion of space. People who know what they're doing never confuse the two. But sometimes pop-sci sources loosely refer to the cosmological redshift as "Doppler", and treat it as if it can be converted directly to a relative velocity, rather than a change in scale factor. (The two work out approximately the same for cosmologically "nearby" objects, but diverge significantly at large redshifts.)

Grant Hutchison