Light Grows Old — What Recedes Turns Red

Light does it too. Light from something receding has its ripples drawn out and pushed toward the red.

Spread out the light of a distant galaxy and the colours sit shifted red — that galaxy is moving away. Astonishingly, this holds in every direction. All of them are receding from us.

We are not being singled out. Space itself is swelling. Mark dots on a balloon and inflate it: from any dot, all the others retreat. The dots never crawled; the rubber grew.

Run it backwards

If it is growing, it was once small. Wind it back far enough and everything gathers into one place. That is where the thought of a beginning comes from.

The first man to press that thought head-on was a Belgian priest and physicist, and some of the reaction at the time bordered on mockery. Then the noise in an antenna took his side.

The question that remainsIf light stretches on the way, is what we receive the same light that set out?