Re: Subject: Red Shift and Planck's equation

That's a great question.  I wasn't sure of the answer myself, so I turned around
and tried another internet answering service, Sten Odenwald's 
Ask An Astronomer,
at http://www2.ari.net/home/odenwald/qadir/qanda.html

He replied:

    The universe's total energy is constant.
    You can think of this energy as being transferred from kinetic
    into gravitational potential energy. For an infinite but 'flat' 
    universe with Omega = 1.000, this transfer will be complete so 
    that after an eternity, the energy will be totally in gravitational 
    potential energy. For an infinite but 'hyperbolic' universe, 
    there will still be a slight amount of kinetic energy left over 
    after eternity. As for the cosmic background radiation, its energy 
    remains the same, its just that the peak of its energy slides 
    from gamma-ray energies to longer and longer wavelengths as the 
    universe gets older. 

Which at first confirmed my intial suspicion, that there was a kinetic/
potential interchange taking place.  but I don't believe the background
radiation is somehow exempt from this like he states in the final sentence.
I don't believe it's possible for the photons to shift in wavelength
yet still retain the same total energy, unless their numbers somehow
increase, which I see no mechanism for.  So I think I'd stick with his
first four sentences, and give the fifth a miss.


Hopefully helpfully,
Jim Moskowitz
The Franklin Institute