Why blue shift?

[Snoggums]

Why is blue shift not called violet shift? I never got the reason, I realize it's possible that there is no reason other then it's easier to say, but I would love a solid answer. Red and violet are at opposite ends of the visible light spectrum, it would make sense to call it violet shift instead of blue shift.

 

Now here's where you make me feel like an idiot because I'm worrying about such a trivial thing.

[iNow]

What an interesting question.

 

Why don't we call it gamma shift? Probably has something to do with blue being a more prominent color in the visual area of the electromagnetic question, but I'm really not sure.

 

Probably has everything to do with the first person who published a paper about the "increase in frequency" resulting from motion relative to an observer, and what they thought. I'm just not sure, though.

[swansont]

Blue is a primary color, and more manly.

 

Seriously, though, I think it's more from narrowing the choices to red-green-blue, rather than ROYGBIV.

[MrMongoose]

Also, blue is one syllable and physicists are lazy.

[Mr Skeptic]

Cause it came out of the blue.

[Dark matter]

Maybe because astronomers like to discriminate against purple. Or maybe, they don't think violet looks good on them.

[abhinav7s]

Must be because blue is a more common, well-known colour. It's a shame. There are some things which have no explanation, it's just a disregard.

The same way, violet should have been the primary colour in RGB and hence it should've been RGV. Thomas Young initially proposed the primary colours to be Red-Green-Violet but James Clerk Maxwell favored changing violet to blue.

[Airbrush]

On 12/18/2007 at 5:49 AM, MrMongoose said:

Also, blue is one syllable and physicists are lazy.

It's similar to calling a supermassive black hole a star, as in "Sagittarius A Star."  Anyone with a brain would say "Sagittarius A ASTERISK" for "Sagittarius A*," so people don't confuse the printed asterisk for a star.

Edited December 22, 2024 by Airbrush