Standard Model of the Universe is Failing?

"Standard Cosmological Simulations" (SCS) is not a single theory like General Relativity; it's a complex and ambitious methodology designed to answer one of the biggest questions of all: if we mix the known ingredients of our universe and let them cook under the laws of physics, do we get a universe that looks like our own?

1. What are Standard Cosmological Simulations? The Cosmic Weather Forecast

Imagine you want to predict the weather. You can't just solve one equation. You need to combine many different physical laws—fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, solar radiation—and run them on a supercomputer.

Standard Cosmological Simulations are the "weather prediction" for the entire universe. They are not a single theory, but massive computer programs that attempt to simulate the evolution of the cosmos from the Big Bang to the present day. The "standard" part refers to the fact that they are all built on our current best-model of the universe: ΛCDM (Lambda-Cold Dark Matter).

The ingredients of an SCS are:

• The "Software" (The Laws): General Relativity to govern gravity and the expansion of spacetime, plus the laws of hydrodynamics and atomic physics to handle normal matter (gas, stars, supernovae).

• The "Hardware" (The Ingredients): The simulation starts with the initial conditions measured from the Cosmic Microwave Background and is "filled" with the universe's recipe: ~5% Normal Matter, ~27% Cold Dark Matter, and ~68% Dark Energy.

The objective is clear: to see if this computational "universe in a box" can, on its own, grow the structures we observe today—the cosmic web, galaxies, and clusters. When the simulations succeed, it builds confidence in ΛCDM. When they fail, it signals a major crisis.

2. The Puzzles: Successes and Cracks in the Standard Model

The simulations have been incredibly successful on large scales. But on the scale of individual galaxies, the story is one of striking contrasts.

• Success Story (Galaxy Rotation): The simulations' greatest triumph was explaining the flat rotation curves of galaxies. They showed that as galaxies form, they are naturally embedded in a vast, diffuse halo of dark matter. The extra gravity from this simulated halo perfectly explains why outer stars spin fast without flying off.

• The First Failure (The Plane of Satellites Problem): This success was quickly followed by a puzzling failure. Observations of our Milky Way and other nearby galaxies show that their small satellite galaxies orbit in vast, thin, co-rotating planes. The simulations, however, predict the opposite: a chaotic, roughly spherical swarm of satellites captured randomly from all directions. The simulations predict chaos where we observe an elegant, synchronized order.

3. The JWST Reckoning: An "Impossibly" Mature Early Universe

For years, puzzles like the Plane of Satellites were intriguing but not fatal to the model. Now, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is delivering a far more profound challenge. JWST is designed to peer back in time to the cosmic dawn, and what it's finding there is in direct tension with the core predictions of the SCS.

The standard ΛCDM model is hierarchical, or "bottom-up." It predicts that small structures form first and gradually merge over billions of years. The first galaxies, therefore, should be small, clumpy, and low-mass.

JWST's observations are showing something very different:

• "Impossibly" Massive Galaxies: JWST is finding galaxies that are shockingly massive and luminous just 300-500 million years after the Big Bang. The slow, gradual "bottom-up" process simulated by the SCS simply doesn't have enough time to grow such behemoths this quickly.

• "Surprisingly" Orderly Galaxies: Where simulations predict messy, chaotic mergers, JWST is finding a surprising number of well-formed, stable disk and spiral galaxies, suggesting a much quieter and faster growth process.

The common thread is that the early universe appears to have been far more efficient and "fast-tracked" than the slow, hierarchical growth predicted by the standard model.

4. What Scale Relativity Brings to the Table: A New Foundation

Faced with these mounting challenges—from the orderly planes of satellites to the impossibly mature early galaxies—it's clear that our standard model is missing something fundamental. This is where a radical alternative like Laurent Nottale's Scale Relativity offers a compelling, if unconventional, perspective.

Instead of trying to fix the ΛCDM model by adding new ingredients or tweaking the simulation parameters, Scale Relativity proposes that the problem lies in the very foundation upon which the simulations are built: the assumption that spacetime is smooth and well-behaved at all scales.

Scale Relativity replaces this assumption with a new first principle: spacetime is fractal. This single change offers a potential framework to address the observed anomalies in a unified way:

1. Explaining "Dark Matter" Effects without Dark Matter:
   In Scale Relativity, the "extra" gravity that we attribute to a dark matter halo is re-interpreted as a manifestation of the fractal geometry of spacetime itself. The complex, non-differentiable nature of spacetime on large scales creates a "dark potential" that mimics the effects of dark matter without requiring any new, exotic particles. This could explain the flat rotation curves of galaxies as a purely geometric effect.

2. A Natural Mechanism for "Fast-Tracked" Formation:
   A hierarchical, "bottom-up" formation is a consequence of a universe dominated by slow-moving, cold dark matter. But in a Scale Relativity framework, the dynamics are different. The fractal nature of spacetime could lead to what Nottale calls "scale quantization." This means that large-scale structures (like galaxies and their satellite systems) would not form through a chaotic, random process of mergers. Instead, they would be constrained to self-organize into specific, stable, quantized configurations, much like electrons in an atom can only occupy specific energy levels.

   • This provides a natural explanation for the Plane of Satellites: the orderly planes would not be a random accident, but a "fundamental orbit" for the galaxy's gravitational field, dictated by the rules of this new quantum-like mechanics at cosmic scales.

   • This could also explain the JWST observations: the existence of massive, well-ordered galaxies in the early universe would no longer be "impossible." They would be the result of a much more efficient, self-organizing process, where structures "snap" into stable configurations much faster than the slow, bottom-up model allows.

In essence, Scale Relativity suggests that the failures of the Standard Cosmological Simulations are not just minor bugs to be fixed, but symptoms of a fundamentally flawed premise. The universe may not be a simple "bottom-up" construction project. Instead, it might be a self-organizing system, where a deep, fractal logic guides the formation of structures at all scales. This is a profound shift in perspective, suggesting that the answers to cosmology's biggest puzzles might not be found by adding more exotic ingredients to our simulations, but by rewriting the very geometric operating system on which the universe runs.