[Humason's actual words on the subject:]   "It is not at all certain that the large red-shifts observed in the spectra are to be interpreted as a Doppler effect, but for convenience they are expressed in terms of velocity and referred to as apparent velocities." (HM31) Page 35. [Added 25 Oct 2003.]

Problems.

When Hubble's redshift-distance relation is applied to the Virgo "Cluster" of galaxies, the cluster appears to be elongated along a line that passes through our Solar neighborhood. Goodman says this causes the "Copernican Problem." (GJ), i.e., it puts us into a preferential reference frame.

Figure 2
The Copernican Problem

"Instead of immediately recognizing this as a problem, the mainstream adopted these configurations,
calling them the "fingers of God." (GJ) This effect is sometimes called a redshift-space distortion.

Louis Desroches says it this way.

"Two important effects occur in redshift space. Although redshift corresponds to true distance according to the Hubble Law, small peculiar velocities not associated with the Hubble flow can cause distortions in redshift space. The most evident of these is the Fingers-of-God effect, where long thin filaments in redshift space point directly back at [an] observer. We should know by now that we are not privileged observers, this effect must be unphysical." (DL)

According to P.J.E. Peebles, Zwicky and Smith found the velocities of individual galaxies in the Coma and Virgo Clusters were about a factor of ten to 100 larger than they expected. (DJ)

This "Fingers-of-God" effect can be seen in Figure 3, which shows the elongated shape of the Virgo Cluster. (The Coma Cluster might be in there too.)

Figure 3
Virgo Cluster in Redshift Space

In 1938 Hubble (HE38) wrestled with two viewpoints on the origin of cosmological redshifts. The first was that the universe (the small part of it that we could see) was stationary and homogenous and the redshift-distance relation was linear, however we did not know the non-Doppler cause of the observed redshifts. The second viewpoint was that the universe was expanding (the spiral nebulae were receding from us) but that the distribution of matter was no longer uniform (the density increases outward), and the law of red shifts is no longer linear (redshifts increase with distance at an accelerated rate).

Regardless of the manner of how light gets cosmologically redshifted, the redshift, as currently understood, is tied to the unverifiable assumption that the unit electrical charge (the charge associated with electrons and protons) is a space-and-time constant, even in the remotest parts of space and at the longest times ago.

In 1988 the author published a (non-mathematical) hypothesis (FR88) that electrical charge is not constant, rather that it is a matter-density-dependent variable.

In quantum mechanics, the wavelengths of emission or absorption lines in spectral series are proportional to the inverse fourth power of the unit electrical charge If electrical charge in a given region of space is different than locally then we should expect to see all of the spectral elements from that region to be shifted in a systematic manner. (The fine-structure constant, which is proportional to the fourth power of the unit electrical charge, may also come into play here. This is because the internal spacing of individual lines within spectral multiplets is proportional to the fine structure constant.) An observed set of redshifted lines thus becomes an indirect measure of the ambient ... matter density in the source's region of space. [The word local was replaced by ambient on 14 Apr 2007.] (See the redshift derivation in Figure 4.)

Figure 4
Variable Charge Redshift Z as a Function of e_(remote) and e_(local)

[Figure was revised on 13 Apr 2007.]

"Ambient matter density" as used above, is related to the total mass in a volume of space on the order of one cubic light year or less. [The word local was replaced by ambient on 14 Apr 2007.]