Researchers Propose 1% Weaker Cosmic Gravity as Planck Data Hint at Einstein-Scale Glitch
Updated
Updated · The Brighter Side of News · Aug 24
Researchers Propose 1% Weaker Cosmic Gravity as Planck Data Hint at Einstein-Scale Glitch
3 articles · Updated · The Brighter Side of News · Aug 24
Summary
A Waterloo-UBC team says gravity may run about 1% weaker across billions of light-years, a minimal tweak to general relativity they call a “cosmic glitch.”
Planck 2018 data gave the model a negative gravity parameter of Ωg = -0.0087 ± 0.0046, putting standard gravity nearly 2 standard deviations away, though a newer Planck release cut that preference to 1.3.
The shift modestly raised the Planck-based Hubble constant to 68.58 from 67.36 km/s/Mpc and reduced the Hubble tension with SH0ES from 4.1 sigma to 3.0 using Planck alone.
That improvement was uneven: combining Planck with Dark Energy Survey data pushed the estimate to 69.69, but adding baryon acoustic oscillation data pulled it back to 68.11 and left a 3.7-sigma gap.
DESI, Euclid and future CMB surveys are expected to test whether the signal is real or just a statistical fluctuation; the model does not resolve the separate S8 matter-clustering tension.