Two-component dissipative distance metric in a viscous vacuum: full Pantheon+ calibration, implications for the Hubble tension, and resolution of JWST surface-brightness anomalies

Abstract: We present and observationally test a two-component dissipative distance metric in which cosmological redshift arises from coherent photon energy dissipation in a viscous vacuum medium rather than from metric expansion. The metric takes the form: D (z) = RH * ln (1 + z) * (1 + γz) where RH is a characteristic dissipation horizon and γ (gamma) quantifies additional photon energy loss in large-scale cosmic structure. A full numerical optimisation against the cosmological subset of the Pantheon+ Type Ia supernova catalogue (N = 1590, z > 0. 01) using the full statistical + systematic covariance matrix yields: RH = 4146. 8 Mpc and γ = 0. 583 with χ²/N = 0. 901 (chi-squared per degree of freedom), compared to 0. 884 for flat ΛCDM optimised on identical data. The model implies H0 ≈ 72. 30 km/s/Mpc, consistent with SH0ES results without Cepheid calibration. Furthermore, the static geometry yields a surface-brightness dimming law of (1 + z) ⁻¹, providing a natural resolution to the "impossible" bright galaxies observed by JWST at z > 10. This work provides a mathematically robust, non-expanding alternative to the standard cosmological model.