This research proposal develops and pre-registers a falsifiable geometric explanation for the JWST high-redshift galaxy excess, tying it to two other standing ΛCDM tensions — the cosmic matter dipole and the Planck low-ℓ hemispheric power asymmetry — through a single underlying mechanism. The hypothesis is that an adjacent false-vacuum bubble, nucleated in the same parent inflating de Sitter background as our pocket universe but at an earlier parent-frame proper time, imprinted a super-horizon long-wavelength modulation on our patch's primordial power spectrum (Erickcek, Kamionkowski P2 — directional alignment of the excess with the CatWISE/LoTSS quasar-dipole direction (Tier P2a) or the Planck hemispheric pole (Tier P2b), as a two-tier test; P3 — monotonic growth of the modulation amplitude with redshift (no turnover), the framework's primary falsifier; P4 — a scale-running parameter constrained against a quasar-dipole-dependent ceiling derived from the Hirata (2009) bound. The proposal specifies a multi-probe observational programme using JADES, CEERS, COSMOS-Web, NGDEEP, PEARLS, Euclid Wide DR1, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory LSST, with full-sky HEALPix mock-catalogue forecasts indicating that the 2027 Euclid + Roman ERS milestone constitutes a decision-class measurement. The framework is compared against LTB void cosmologies, Bianchi anisotropic spacetimes, modified star-formation efficiency, and primordial non-Gaussianity, with explicit discriminating observables identified for each. The hypothesis is fully falsifiable within a two-year horizon from data delivery. In the event of non-detection, the same analysis tightens the upper bound on the long-mode modulation amplitude at JWST scales to ≲ 0.02 (95% CL) — an order-of-magnitude improvement over the existing Hirata quasar bound — and delivers the first direction-resolved high-z galaxy abundance maps from JWST + Euclid + Roman, of independent value regardless of outcome. Version 4.3 (June 2026). This version introduces a quasar-dipole-dependent (two-scenario) falsification threshold for the P4 scale-running test, conditioning the verdict on the contemporaneous resolution of the CatWISE quasar-dipole systematics debate (Abghari et al. 2024 vs. Böhme et al. 2025 / Dam et al. 2023).
Topbas Alparslan (Wed,) studied this question.
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