A flat, static universe is not a physical analogy. It is a model of the universe that is not supported by observation.
Is The Universe Static Or Expanding?
Barry Setterfield, 4th August 2002.
http://ldolphin.org/staticu.html
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The Quantized Redshift
From 1975 onward, after a long, careful series of measurements on binary galaxies and galaxies in the Coma cluster, Tifft published several papers indicating that redshift differences between galaxies were not smooth but went in jumps, or were quantised [Tifft, 1977, p.31]. The Coma cluster exhibited this effect in such a way that bands of redshift ran through the whole cluster. Some little time later, Tifft was on sabbatical leave in Italy and lectured on the puzzling quantization effects he had been observing. At one of these lectures he was presented with a list of accurate redshifts using radio measurements of hydrogen with the comment "I am sure you will not find periodicity in here." In this case, the word "periodicity" is referring to the quantisation effect. Astronomer Halton Arp reports on the outcome of Tifft's analysis of this data set by stating: "Not only did the quantization appear in this independent set of very accurate double galaxy measurements, but it was the most clear cut, obviously significant demonstration of the effect yet seen. ...The results were later reconfirmed by optical measures in the Southern Hemisphere..." [Arp, 1987, p. 112].
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They noted that the motion of the Solar System through space imparted a genuine Doppler shift of its own to all measurements of redshift. When this Solar System Doppler component was subtracted from the survey results, redshift quantization appeared globally across the whole sky [Tifft & Cocke, 1984, p.492]. Despite the size of the data set that the Fisher-Tully catalogue provided, the 'noisy data' argument continued as the official reason for rejection of the results. However, in 1985, there was an unexpected and independent confirmation of the quantization effects. Sulentic and Arp used radio-telescopes to accurately measure the redshifts of over 260 galaxies from more than 80 different groups for an entirely different purpose. As they did their analysis, the same quantizations that Tifft and Cocke had discovered surprisingly appeared in their data, and the measurement error was only 1/9th of the size of the quantization [Arp & Sulentic, 1985, p. 88; also Arp, 1987, pp.108, 110, 112-113, 119].
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Attempting To Settle The Issue
These developments were disturbing to astronomers and cosmologists alike. In the early 1990's two astronomers in Scotland decided to prove Tifft wrong once and for all. Bruce Guthrie and William Napier from the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh used the most accurate hydrogen line redshift data. By the end of 1991 they had studied 106 spiral galaxies and detected a quantization of about 37.5 km/s, very close to Tifft's quantum multiple of 36.2 km/s [Schewe & Stein, 1992a, No.61]. By November 1992, a further 89 spiral galaxies had been examined in which a quantization of 37.2 km/s emerged [Schewe & Stein, 1992b, No. 104]. In 1995 they submitted a paper to Astronomy and Astrophysics with the results from a further 97 spiral galaxies showing a 37.5 km/s quantization. Because the prevailing wisdom said the quantization only appeared because of small number statistics, the referees asked them to repeat their analysis with another set of galaxies. This Guthrie and Napier did with an additional set of 117 other galaxies. The same 37.5 km/s quantization was plainly in evidence in this 1996 data set, and the referees accepted the paper [Matthews, 1996, p.759; Corliss, 1996, No. 105, Arp, 1998, p.199-200]. A Fourier analysis of all 399 data points showed a huge spike at 37.5 km/s with a significance of one in a million. The measurement error was about 1/10th the size of the quantization. One comment on the redshift quantization plot stated: "One can see at a glance how accurately the troughs and peaks of redshift march metronomically outward from 0 to over 2000 km/s." [Arp, 1998, p.199]. Despite this observational evidence, cosmologists like James Peebles of Princeton are reluctant to accept it. He stated: "I'm not being dogmatic and saying it cannot happen, but if it does, it's a real shocker." [Corliss, op. cit; Arp, 1998, p.200].
But now were are getting off topic.
