We propose and observationally test a two-component dissipative distance metric derived from the Optico-Hydrodynamic Vacuum (OHV) framework, in which the physical vacuum is modeled as a viscous energy medium. Cosmological redshift is attributed to coherent energy dissipation of photons propagating through this medium, rather than to metric expansion. The proposed distance metric takes the form D (z) = RH * ln (1+z) * (1 + gamma * z), where RH is the dissipation horizon and gamma quantifies additional photon energy loss due to large-scale cosmic structure. Calibrated against the cosmological sample of the Pantheon+ Type Ia supernova dataset (N = 1590, z > 0. 01), the optimized metric parameters are found to be RH = 4156 Mpc and gamma = 0. 581. With these parameters, the model achieves a remarkably tight fit with a reduced chi-square of 0. 44. This demonstrates a quantitatively significant statistical advantage (a 38% reduction in residual variance) over the standard flat Lambda-CDM model (chi-square 0. 71) on the same dataset. Critically, the optimized dissipation horizon RH = 4156 Mpc inherently implies a local Hubble parameter H₀ = 72. 13 km/s/Mpc, independently corroborating the SH0ES late-universe measurements and offering a natural geometric resolution to the Hubble Tension. Furthermore, the model naturally resolves the anomalously high surface brightness of z > 10 galaxies discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), predicting observed magnitudes 2. 1 to 2. 5 mag brighter than Lambda-CDM without invoking non-standard stellar physics.
Sergey Paigachkin (2026) studied this question.