A version of gravity that 'remembers' its own past has been proven mathematically stable, offering a new alternative to Einstein’s theory.
March 31, 2026
Original Paper
Global stability of Minkowski spacetime for a causal nonlocal gravity model
arXiv · 2603.26689
The Takeaway
Standard gravity only depends on the current moment, but 'causal nonlocal' gravity includes a persistent memory of its past state. This proof shows that a universe with this 'lagging' gravity wouldn't collapse, making it a viable model for explaining how the cosmos evolves over time.
From the abstract
We establish small-data global existence and decay for the causal-informational nonlocal gravity model CETOmega in 3+1 dimensions. Under harmonic gauge the field equations reduce to a quasilinear hyperbolic system with causal memory generated by a retarded Stieltjes operator K^{-1}. We establish three results: (i) commutator estimates for the Klainerman vector fields acting on K^{-1}, showing that the nonlocal operator costs at most two additional derivatives relative to Einstein vacuum; (ii) a