Yes, it would be nice to think that (as you imply) this was simply a “Poisson d’Avril” but a quick literature search indicates that it’s not the first time that such an “explanation” has been put forward, apparently seriously, and of course (as current world affairs have shown only too shockingly) even the most outrageous mis-information will be believed, and spread, by somebody. The fact that in this case the mis-information is in the form of a scientific (or perhaps I should say pseudo-scientific) paper submitted to arxiv will tend to lead credence to the “research” even though it was published on 1st April and so I felt I should counter the arguments made so at least readers of the Forum who are not perhaps au fait with cosmological ideas will not be deceived.
As previously stated – watch this space!
