A competing theory to 'dark energy' suggests universe has different time zones

This is the worst analogy I have heard in a long time. It&#x27;s even bad for physics journalism.<p>And the subtitle says &quot;timescape&quot;, which immediately clues me into what the theory is about, instead of &quot;time zone&quot; as in the title.

While it is possible that relaxing the homogeneity assumption is needed to resolve the tensions observed among different cosmological measurements, it is also worth noting that supernovae are a quite messy tracer, because we don&#x27;t really understand their explosions well enough. So a lot of things are just empirically calibrated. We are also now limited by systematics when using supernovae for cosmology.

Can Vernor Vinge please spend just one day not being right about everything?

What I don&#x27;t get about this timescape theory, is what is the mechanism for time passing faster in the &#x27;voids&#x27;? Or equivalently, what makes time pass slower along the edges of the voids? Is it supposed to be gravitational time dilation? (e.g. &#x27;low is slow&#x27;) Surely this can&#x27;t have an effect of this magnitude (a 2x speedup in the voids)? As I understand it gravitational time dilation only has significant effects (like the 2x slowdown) in the strong gravitational region regime, around black holes etc.

This is timescape cosmology’s inhomogenous universe hypothesis [1] that competes with ΛCDM’s cosmological principle [2].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Inhomogeneous_cosmology" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Inhomogeneous_cosmology</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Cosmological_principle" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Cosmological_principle</a>

In the homogenous cosmology there is the parameter Ω which determines if the universe is flat or not. Observations seem to show that Ω = 1, but if Ω&gt;1 it will collapse back into a black hole and if Ω&lt;=1 it expands forever.<p>Since the universe as a whole is balanced I&#x27;m wondering if you&#x27;re in the dense part of the timescape your fate is to wind up in a black hole.

If these filaments and spaces have enough gravitational differences to affect the flow of time, wouldn&#x27;t we also be unable to resolve distant objects as their light would be bent slightly and repeatedly in a random fashion?

If it’s all a swirling spinning turbulent mess is there enough difference in relative velocity that we’ve had more or less time since the Big Bang than other places?

oh come on! Can&#x27;t we all just use UTC and get along?

I love the smell of vindication in the morning<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6353482">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6353482</a>

&gt; Instead, the basis of the timescape model is that, in fact, we see in the universe around us today that there are giant cosmic structures, enormous filaments and walls filled with galaxies and galaxy clusters. And in between those filaments and walls we have giant voids of nothing.<p>Could explain we haven&#x27;t found life elsewhere?

The problem with quantum physics is that it&#x27;s also a matter of interpretation.<p>It&#x27;s like interpreting the body language: what you think could true only from your cultural perspective about people who share your culture.