The rather wide-spread belief that cosmological expansion of a flat 3D–space ( with spatial curvature k = 0 ) can not be observationally distinguished from a kinematics of galaxies moving in a flat and non-expanding space is erroneous .
We suggest that the error may have its source in a non relativistic intuition that imagines the Universe not as a spacetime but separates space from time and pictures the cosmological expansion as space evolving in time .
The physical reality , however , is fundamentally different — the expanding Universe is necessarily a curved spacetime .
We show here that the fact that the spacetime is curved implies that the interpretation of the observed cosmological redshift as being due to the expansion of the cosmological 3D–space is observationally verifiable .
Thus it is impossible to mimic the true cosmological redshift by a Doppler effect caused by motion of galaxies in a non-expanding 3D-space , flat or curved .
We summarize our points in simple spacetime diagrams that illustrate a gedanken experiment distinguishing between expansion of space and pure kinematics .
We also provide all relevant mathematics .
None of the previously published discussions of the issue , including a recent popular Scientific American article [ 1 ] , offered a similarly clear way out of the confusion .