A New Cosmological Distance Metric from Vacuum Viscosity: Derivation, Verification, and Implications for JWST and Local Experiments

The standard ACDM cosmology interprets cosmological redshift as a consequence of metric expansion, leading to a linear distance-redshift relation D = (c/H_0)z for nearby objects and more complex functions at high z. However, recent observations by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) of surprisingly bright and massive galaxies at z > 10 challenge this interpretation, as the predicted surface brightness dimming of (1+z)^-4 makes such objects virtually undetectable. In the Primary Energy (PE) framework, the physical vacuum is treated as a viscous superfluid medium. Light propagating through this medium loses energy adiabatically ("tired light"), yielding an exponential attenuation law E = E_0 * exp(-D/R_H), where R_H = c/H_0 ~ 14.4 billion light-years is the characteristic dissipation length. This leads to a novel distance-redshift relation D = R_H * ln(1+z). We verify this metric against well-measured Type Ia supernovae at z = 0.05 (discrepancy < 2.5%) and show that it naturally explains the JWST observations: surface brightness dimming is only (1+z)^-1, reducing the attenuation factor from ~40,000 to ~14 at z = 13.2. Furthermore, we compute the tiny energy loss over one astronomical unit (~10^-15), explaining why historical ether-drift experiments (Michelson-Morley) and modern local measurements fail to detect vacuum viscosity. Finally, we discuss a laboratory test using magnetic fields above 17.5 T (e.g., superconducting magnets) to mimic the equivalent of millions of light-years of propagation, providing a direct experimental verification of the proposed metric.