Leading astronomers meet at London's Royal Society to examine the basic assumptions of the recent cosmology

The leading astronomers will have a conference at London's Royal Society to examine the basic assumptions of the recent cosmology . The conference is organized by Subir Sarkar (see this).

I am happy to hear that also leading cosmologists are aware of what is happening. In contrast to this, in my own country Finland, the local leading cosmologist appearing in the media became completely silent when JWST began to produce its findings.

The TGD view based on the new view of space-time and quantum is consistent with these findings. The following comments include the TGD based reaction on some points represented in the popular article.

The basic new elements brought by TGD to the cosmology are the new view of space-times as 4-surfaces in H=M⁴× CP₂, a generalization of quantum theory based on number theoretical view of physics complementary to the geometric view, and zero energy ontology (ZEO) solving the basic problem of quantum measurement theory and predicting that the arrow of time changes in ordinary state function reductions.

1. A number of researchers have found evidence that the universe may be expanding more quickly in some areas compared to others, raising the tantalizing possibility that megastructures could be influencing the universe's growth in significant ways.

   Comment: The basic prediction of TGD inspired cosmology is the existence of 4-D space-time surfaces that I call cosmic strings. They are unstable against thickening to monopole flux tubes, liberating huge energy transformed to ordinary matter. This would be the TGD counterpart for inflation. These objects can have length scales which are cosmological and can affect the rate of cosmic expansion.

   Number theoretic view of TGD predicts that these cosmic strings are characterized by p-adic length scale characterizing their thickness and length and also by effective Planck constant h_eff which is essentially the dimension of an algebraic extension of rationals assignable to the space-time surface that they correspond. The quantum coherence scale of the cosmic string is proportional to h_eff. The quantum coherent phases characterized by h_eff reside at the monopole flux tubes and behave like dark matter.

   Quantum coherence is possible in arbitrarily long scales and completely changes the views of what quantum gravitation is. For instance, classical gravitational fields of astrophysical objects like the Sun and Earth would play a key role in biology.

   For primordial cosmic strings h_eff is its minimal value smaller than h, but increases during cosmological evolution. The portion of ordinary matter with h_eff=h is reduced during cosmological evolution and this corresponds to the increasing portion of missing baryons. Galactic dark rather would correspond to the energy of cosmic strings consisting of magnetic and volume energy and thus dark energy plus a possible, probably small, contribution of h_eff> h phases. The model explains the flat velocity spectrum of distant stars around galaxies.

2. Sarkar and his colleagues, for instance, are suggesting that the universe is "lopsided" after studying over a million quasars, which are the active nuclei of galaxies where gas and dust are being gobbled up by a supermassive black hole.

   The team found that one hemisphere actually hosted slightly more of these quasars, suggesting one area of the night sky was more massive than the other, undermining our conception of dark energy, a hypothetical form of energy used to explain why the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate.

   Other researchers have suggested that the cosmological constant, which has been used for decades as a way to denote the rate of the universe's expansion, actually varies across space, which would contradict the standard model of physics.

   Comments:

   1. In the TGD framework quasars as active nuclei would be cosmic strings which have just started to decay to ordinary matter and to feed energy and mass to the environment. They are not blackholes, which would "eat" matter from the environment, and are blackhole-like objects in their exterior. They feed energy to their environment and this is the TGD counterpart of inflation. Whitehole might be a better metaphor.
   2. In the TGD framework the fluctuations of the value of h_eff explain density fluctuations inducing CMB temperature fluctuation. The local especially large fluctuation of h_eff could solve the problem of two Hubble constants.
   3. In the fractal cosmology associated with the many-sheeted space-time of the TGD Universe fluctuations of h_eff appear in arbitrary long scales and could also explain the lopsidedness.
   4. Vacuum energy density depends on the value of the Hubble constant, which depends on h_eff and its fluctuations would make average vacuum energy density dependent on position.
3. Stars and galaxies older than the Universe is one paradoxical discovery made already before JWST but not mentioned in the popular article. The zero energy ontology (ZEO) forces by TGD changes profoundly the view about the relationship between experienced time and the geometric time of physics. Ordinary, "big" state function reductions change the arrow of geometric time so that the system can live forth and back in geometric time. This implies that the evolutionary age of a system can be longer than its usual age. One estimate gives an age which is roughly 2 times longer and it has been indeed suggested that the age of the universe explaining the findings could be this.

See for instance https://tgdtheory.fi/public_html/articles/3pieces.pdf .

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.