At the stage of cosmic history when standard cosmology says the Universe was about 300 million years old, a new model puts its age at roughly 4.6 billion years. That gap is the heart of a University of Ottawa proposal that the Universe is 26.7 billion years old, nearly double the accepted 13.8 billion.
The theory is called CCC+TL for “covarying coupling constants plus tired light” and posits that phenomena traditionally linked to dark matter and energy might instead be explained by fundamental constants that change with time.
Adjunct Professor Rajendra Gupta and post-doctoral researcher Nikolaos Samaras put it to the test with various astronomical data sets in 2025 and 2026.
The theory reformulates the Einstein and Friedmann equations, which means that the researchers needed to construct their own equations and programs for each test. Its results on light elements’ abundances, including hydrogen and helium, were consistent with those of the standard model. It also confirmed cosmic chronometer findings on the expansion history.
In a separate recent paper, the researchers say the model reproduced rotation curves for all 175 galaxies in the SPARC database without dark matter. They also report an initial proof of concept on the Bullet Cluster. A supernova time-dilation analysis is still under review.
The James Webb Space Telescope has found galaxies that look too large and mature for their early place in cosmic history. With billions of extra years, the researchers calculate, such galaxies would be about 12 times larger in size and mass than standard cosmology predicts.
Gupta expects that galaxies lie far beyond the range of Webb. GLIMPSE, the observing campaign of Webb, seeks to detect redshifts larger than 50, which would leave very little room for formation of large galaxies according to the standard model.
It is a consistency test and does not prove the uselessness of dark matter and dark energy. The scientists note that one of the core assumptions requires further physical substantiation. The test of the model for the cosmic microwave background has not yet been published.
