Cosmological Redshift Without Metric Expansion: A Relational Scale Interpretation

This preprint presents an alternative interpretation of cosmological redshift. Instead of metric expansion, redshift is understood as a relational scale difference between emission and detection within a universal scale-field framework. The model introduces a dimensionless scale field Ω(x,t) while preserving local physical consistency and the invariance of dimensionless constants. Within this framework, gravitation, time dilation, and cosmological redshift are treated as different manifestations of a common underlying scale structure. The paper discusses implications for gravitational time dilation, Tolman surface brightness, angular-size relations, the cosmic microwave background, and the role of dark energy in standard cosmology. It also outlines falsifiable empirical distinctions from the expansion-based interpretation, including the absence of a necessary cosmological redshift drift in the standard expansion sense under uniform exponential scale evolution. This preprint presents an expanded and revised English version of the author’s earlier scale-field interpretation of cosmological redshift. Version 2.0, revised March 2026. Preprint - not peer reviewed.