Selected Honorable Mention EssaysNo Access

Can a variable gravitational constant resolve the faint young Sun paradox?

Varun Sahni

Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Post Bag 4, Ganeshkhind, Pune 411 007, India

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and

Yuri Shtanov

Bogolyubov Institute for Theoretical Physics, 14-b Metrologicheskaya St., Kiev 03680, Ukraine

Department of Physics, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev, 64/13 Vladimirskaya St., Kiev 01601, Ukraine

Corresponding author.

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https://doi.org/10.1142/S0218271814420188Cited by:11 (Source: Crossref)

Abstract

Solar models suggest that four billion years ago the young Sun was ~25% fainter than it is today, rendering Earth's oceans frozen and lifeless. However, there is ample geophysical evidence that Earth had a liquid ocean teeming with life 4 Gyr ago. Since , the Sun's luminosity is exceedingly sensitive to small changes in the gravitational constant G. We show that a percent-level increase in G in the past would have prevented Earth's oceans from freezing, resolving the faint young Sun paradox. Such small changes in G are consistent with observational bounds on ΔG/G. Since , an increase in G leads to fainter supernovae, creating tension between standard candle and standard ruler probes of dark energy. Precisely such a tension has recently been reported by the Planck team.

This essay received an Honorable Mention in the 2014 Essay Competition of the Gravity Research Foundation.

Keywords:

PACS: 92.60.Iv, 92.70.Qr, 95.30.Sf, 96.60.Q-

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