Tethered galaxies and the expanding space paradigm

I examine the counterintuitive claim from Davis et.al. [1] that a stationary or receding galaxy in an expanding universe may exhibit blueshift, even when the universe contains no gravitating matter. I show that with more precise calculations the effect disappears for the empty universe. I also discuss how this is related to the currently popular idea of ‘expanding space’, looking at how this idea arose, and why I think it has serious flaws. 1 Special and General relativity In 1908 Hermann Minkowski claimed Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality But it didn’t happen. In cosmology today the favorite explanation of the expansion of the universe is the balloon model, where space is compared to the rubber surface of a balloon and the proper time of comoving objects is taken as the time coordinate for the universe. Far from fading into obscurity, space now has an almost tangible representation. So how did this happen? Well if you asked the question on an internet forum, then the answer would be straightforward. Minkowski was talking about special relativity, but the large scale behaviour of the universe is not governed ∗[email protected]