A Rebellious Theory May Prove the Universe Is Twice as Old as We Think

Why the Age Is Disputed

The commonly cited age of 13.8 billion years comes largely from measurements of the cosmic microwave background by the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite. Those results were released in 2013 and finalized in 2018; later observations by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope in Chile produced a similar estimate.

Both sets of findings fit the standard cosmological model, lambda cold dark matter, or ΛCDM. That framework relies on dark matter and dark energy, neither of which has been directly detected.

A Different Account of Redshift

In 1929, Edwin Hubble observed that light from more distant galaxies is shifted farther toward the red end of the spectrum. Most astronomers interpret this redshift as evidence that the universe is expanding. That year, Fritz Zwicky proposed “tired light”: the idea that light loses energy over long distances, making distant galaxies appear redder.

Gupta has revived a version of that proposal within CCC+TL, while retaining cosmic expansion. He says the combination addresses earlier objections to tired-light models, including their difficulty explaining why distant supernovae appear to brighten and fade more slowly.

A Longer Cosmic Timeline

CCC+TL seeks to explain phenomena attributed to dark matter and dark energy through modified gravitational effects. In a 2023 paper, Gupta used the model to estimate the universe’s age at 26.7 billion years.

Mainstream Tests Remain

The researchers say their model preserves predictions for Big Bang nucleosynthesis, the process that produced the universe’s first elements. Their study, published in Universe, describes how quantities with dimensions of length change under a universal scaling function while dimensionless constants and ratios remain unchanged.

Most cosmologists continue to regard ΛCDM as the best fit to a broad range of observations, including the cosmic microwave background and the distribution of galaxies. CCC+TL remains outside the mainstream and will need to pass many more tests.