If Universal Constants Evolved then The Universe is Twice as Old at 26.7 Billion Years Instead of 13.8 Billion

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A new astronomical model proposes that the age of the Universe is 26.7 billion years old and not 13.7 billion years.

For years, astronomers and physicists have calculated the age of our universe by measuring the time elapsed since the Big Bang and by studying the oldest stars based on the redshift of light coming from distant galaxies. In 2021, thanks to new techniques and advances in technology, the age of our universe was thus estimated at 13.797 billion years using the Lambda-CDM concordance model.

However, many scientists have been puzzled by the existence of stars like the Methuselah that appear to be older than the estimated age of our universe and by the discovery of early galaxies in an advanced state of evolution made possible by the James Webb Space Telescopenorth_eastexternal link. These galaxies, existing a mere 300 million years or so after the Big Bang, appear to have a level of maturity and mass typically associated with billions of years of cosmic evolution. Furthermore, they’re surprisingly small in size, adding another layer of mystery to the equation.

Gupta found it is possible to reinterpret the redshift as a hybrid phenomenon, rather than purely due to expansion.

Gupta introduces the idea of evolving “coupling constants,” as hypothesized by Paul Dirac. Coupling constants are fundamental physical constants that govern the interactions between particles. According to Dirac, these constants might have varied over time. By allowing them to evolve, the timeframe for the formation of early galaxies observed by the Webb telescope at high redshifts can be extended from a few hundred million years to several billion years. This provides a more feasible explanation for the advanced level of development and mass observed in these ancient galaxies.

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society -JWST early Universe observations and ΛCDM cosmology

Abstract
Deep space observations of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have revealed that the structure and masses of very early Universe galaxies at high redshifts (⁠z∼15⁠), existing at about 300 million year after the BigBang, may be as evolved as the galaxies in existence for ∼10 billion years. The JWST findings are thus in strong tension with the Λ CDM cosmological model.

While tired light (TL) models have been shown to comply with the JWST angular galaxy size data, they cannot satisfactorily explain isotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations or fit the supernovae distance modulus vs. redshift data well. Researchers have developed hybrid models that include the tired light concept in the expanding universe. The hybrid ΛCDM model fits the supernovae type 1a data well but not the JWST observations. We present a model with covarying coupling constants (CCC), starting from the modified FLRW metric and resulting Einstein and Friedmann equations, and a CCC + TL hybrid model. They fit the Pantheon + data admirably, and the CCC + TL model is compliant with the JWST observations. It stretches the age of the universe to 26.7 Gyr with 5.8 Gyr at z=10 and 3.5 Gyr at z=20⁠, giving enough time to form massive galaxies. It thus resolves the ‘impossible early galaxy’ problem without requiring the existence of primordial black hole seeds or modified power spectrum, rapid formation of massive population III stars, and super Eddington accretion rates. One could infer the CCC model as an extension of the Λ CDM model with a dynamic cosmological constant.

23 thoughts on “If Universal Constants Evolved then The Universe is Twice as Old at 26.7 Billion Years Instead of 13.8 Billion”

  1. I’m very doubtful. I rather expect it has more to do with what people saw as the expansion of space-time decelerating being actually due to the rate of time for all things (except the expansion of space-time, the only thing it could be measured against) accelerating until a subjective 7.8 billion years from the Big Bang.

    Since that time, the expansion of space-time has seemed to be accelerating due to our rate of time now slowing down, relative to the expansion of space-time.

    This probably is because space-time is a wave propagating from the Big Bang event and waves do not alter their wavelength as they propagate, yet the amplitude does decrease as the wave propagates. At 7.8 billion years, the amplitude met the wavelength in a 1 to 1 relationship that, when the proportions are multiplied by each other, and the square root is taken, yields the maximum rate of time possible, yet when the proportion is other than 1 to 1, that rate will always be smaller, regardless of whether the amplitude is still larger than the wavelength, or the amplitude has descended below the wavelength.

    The same equation also yields the rate of time at relativistic speeds, for example: at 50% the speed of light, would be represented as 1.5 to .5. Take the square root, after multiplying 1.5 by .5, and get .866 (or 86.6% of the maximum rate of time). Of course, then one has to ask what it would mean if you flipped the proportions, given that it is not possible to move at negative speed. I believe that applies to the conditions as one approaches the state of a singularity, a state that would then be as unobtainable as accelerating to the speed of light, regardless of being able to come very close.

    Yes, I know it’s crackpot, but the explanation works and the math works and it’s hard to discuss even this little in a web post.

    • The real explanation for the Fermi Paradox. The first sufficiently advanced civilization learns how to directly reprogram space-time. Shortly thereafter, a worm or a virus gets loose into the system and there’s nothing to do but wait for the next Big Bang event.

  3. Not Zwicky’s tired light but tiring light. Light just stretches into something we can no longer detect.

  4. Just imagine if the very data we receive from our instruments does not match our models due to alteration by an advance civilization. We can’t see techo life because we are encased in a bubble as we are being watched to see how we would progress without observing advance civilization as a starting point. The only way we will know is if we advance far enough to get equipment outside out oort cloud and return with new data. That would be a good idea for a book.

    • ‘Real’ inspiration with progress for humanity comes from advanced (highly specialized and most efficiently adjusted) developed plants/creatures (life forms) on this planet (common sense with highest acceptance/probability?), random variation events, manifestation of science and physics laws in visible nature, e.g. geological or biological structures or trans-minded(senses)/trans-consciousness inspiration from (a) possibly higher dimension(s).
      Why we are who we are and what are ‘constants’ within an ancient world/times inspired ‘Πάντα ῥεῖ | Panta rhei’?

  5. Without reading the original paper, might it be possible that the constants are evolving in a non linear fashion, and accelerating at an ever faster rate? In other words, looking forward, may the future be far “shorter” than was anticipated? So we may actually not be living in a relatively early phase of the Universe, but rather in a late, accelerating phase?

  7. If the universe is 13.7B years old, the Earth/Solar System is about a third the age of the Universe. Obviously much of the early history Life would have been impossible. So the idea that we may be among the first Technological civilizations in existence is intuitively plausible.

    We could easily have discovered that our planet was 1% of the age of the universe and this would have seemed much less plausible.

    A Universe that’s twice as old is one with a sharper Fermi Paradox.

    • Not necessarily; If physical constants are evolving, you have to consider the possibility that the laws of physics weren’t *quite* suited to life originally, and only ‘recently’ became suitable. Or, a little darker, the original life in the universe died out due to physics shifting away from permitting it, and we’re the latecomer ‘new physics’ life.

      I don’t have access beyond the abstract, so I’m not privy to the exact details of the proposed changes. The theory seems to be a hybrid “tired light” theory where traveling photons gradually lose energy; The change in physics is a cause of the loss of energy. But changing physics WOULD have other implications, I think, such as chemistry operating a little differently.

      • Or, darker still, perhaps death is just a temporary inconvenience for those ancients.

        “That is not dead which can eternal lie,
        And with strange aeons even death may die.”

      • Disquieting thought, given they could again drift too much, out of the cosmic Goldilocks zone we are now.

        And there won’t be any escape, if it’s the overall cosmos the one changing.

        A future when our biochemistry one day becomes impossible and existing living beings suddenly drop dead wouldn’t be much fun.

        • Well, it would hardly be sudden. (Unless the universe dropped into a “true vacuum” state, in which case it would be so fast you’d never notice.)

          I expect that intelligent lifeforms could manage the transition, by inventing new modes of life, or just going to being technological. Primitive, unintelligent life, OTOH, might be in trouble.

          • Or maybe it is just that galaxies don’t provide a stable secure spot for life in the long run, as there is just too much going on. We do see some stars racing out of our galaxy into the intergalactic void. Maybe some of them were pushed . . . by folks living in their systems that figured out that just surviving for a few billion years in this crowded environment is a miracle you can’t keep counting on.

      • I think there has been some sci-fi where the early denizens of the universe were energy beings and their reign came to an end about the time things cooled off enough to allow matter. Kind of their while Heat Death of the Universe thing.

        And if I have to make a guess (okay, make that an informed guess) I would conjecture we are both early, and rare.

        I do wonder what will happen to a lot of the life in this galaxy, assuming there is any, when the core of the Andromeda galaxy merges with our own in around 3 billion years. Sounds like a quasar might result right here in River City.

    • If complex life is easy enough, then you don’t need a large time margin to evolve a lot of it. For example, if life on Earth evolved only 1 million years after the earliest possible point when life could evolve somewhere, those 1 million years would be plenty of time for many other species to evolve before us (and gain a large technological lead).

      If that time margin is more than ~10 million years, then that’s also plenty of time for the first spacefaring species to spread through the whole galaxy even without FTL (even 1 million years could be enough for that under some scenarios).

      It’s not likely that life on Earth evolved at the earliest possible point when that was possible for the whole galaxy. The smaller the time margin, the lower the probability. So if we are the first, that implies that complex life is difficult.

      But after looking into the timeline of key events in our own evolution, my impression is that even complex life is almost inevitable. There are limits on how long it takes, but on a suitable planet it’s a matter of when, not if.

      That still leaves room for the rare Earth hypothesis, but the galaxy is large, so I’m not putting much faith in that either. I’m most inclined to believe the zoo hypothesis.

      • Moreover, the rate of evolution is likely not the same everywhere. A few million years difference over the course of ~4.5 billion years is practically negligible. Even if Earth was the first to evolve early life, that still leaves plenty of time for life on other planets to produce space faring civilizations millions of years ahead of us.

        Is Earth the most optimal planet for the fastest possible evolution of an intelligent species? Probably not.

        So either intelligent life is really difficult (which I doubt), and/or there aren’t enough suitable planets around (which I doubt), or we’re most likely not the first.

      • The “Rare Earth” hypothesis is that life itself is probably pretty common, but that the stability of conditions necessary for it to build to Earth’s level of complexity is fairly rare. Apparently we dodges a LOT of bullets along the way to where we are now.

      • It depends on what you call “complex life:”
        * Tissue-differentiating multicellularity arose independently in at least six separate Eukaryote clades, so it’s a pretty safe bet that this one is “easy.”
        * Eukarioticity itself, or rather the ability to metabolise oxygen or some other highly energetic, highly redox environment, is tougher to gauge, as it only happened once. There might have been life on Venus 700 million years ago when supposedly there was a catastrophic release of CO₂ from the crust and pressures and temperatures rose to their present levels. If so, it wasn’t able to adapt there as it was able to adapt here.
        * As for a tool-using strategy, coupled with an environment where fire and thus things like metal refining is possible… it’s not at all likely that species will gravitate towards that particular evolutive strategy, so this one is a big filter indeed.
        * Finally, once a species uses tools and is able to develop a culture, the Zeitgeist where technological progress is sought as a good in itself is something we can see that is also not a given: it may have happened in Hellenistic Greece, in early Islamic Persia, and possibly in very early Ming China, but if so they wound up diverting from that path and seeking other cultural goods in their place. Besides that, only in Renaissance Italy and southern Germany did this kind of cultural imperative go on to forge the modern technological society.

        Multiplying all of the filters together, I don’t think that it is safe to say that spacefaring civilisations are “easy” in any sense of the word , even in a 27-billion-years-old universe. We’re just really bad at intuitive statistics.

        • In my 2nd post, I revised from “complex” to “intelligent”.

          I think the limiting factor is oxygenesis, most likely in the form of water-based photosynthesis. It is a difficult process to evolve, but given the relative abundance of water vs other possible reagents, there is a strong competitive advantage and evolutionary incentive for it to evolve.

          Once that is in place, it takes a while to oxidize various reducing chemicals in the environment and for free oxygen to accumulate to significant levels. These are some of the major time sinks on the way to more complex life.

          But, oxygen metabolism evolved relatively quickly afterwards, indeed perhaps even before this Great Oxidation Event was complete here on Earth. So I don’t think that is a stumbling block.

          It makes sense: it allows more energetic metabolism, which is a big evolutionary advantage. Later, it enables larger organisms. And there’s built-in selection for it. As oxygen levels rise, cells that cannot at least tolerate it would die off, leaving the tolerant ones. And that tolerance may well be the precursor to more useful metabolism.

          Endosymbiosis occurred at least twice on Earth: with mitochondria and with chloroplasts. And there are big advantages to multicellularity and tissue differentiation.

          Tool use also evolved in multiple species. The same oxygen that enables complex life also enables fire and metallurgy. Finally, assuming a diversity of proto-cultures, those that advance their technology will naturally out-compete the ones that don’t.

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