What spectral shift occurs when light from distant galaxies is stretched by the expansion of space?
Answer
Shifts toward the infrared band.
The expansion of the universe causes the very fabric of space to stretch as light travels across cosmological distances. This stretching directly increases the wavelength of the light photons, a phenomenon known as cosmological redshift. Light that was originally emitted in the visible range, such as blue light from hot, young stars, can be shifted so far towards the longer wavelength end of the spectrum that it is observed primarily in the infrared band when it finally reaches Earth.
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