Stars Would Remember a Recent Gravitational Transition: Testing G-step Resolutions of the Hubble Tension with Red Dwarfs
Abstract
We test the hypothesis that Newton's gravitational constant underwent a rapid transition approximately $73−130\,{\rm Myr}$ ago, as proposed in some resolutions of the Hubble tension. Fully convective red dwarf stars with masses below ∼0.35 M⊙ have thermal timescales comparable to the proposed transition look-back times, so an appreciable present-day memory can remain. We show that a rapid step in G induces measurable changes in their radii and confront these predictions with mass-radius measurements of eight red dwarfs in detached eclipsing binaries. We find that the G-step models proposed to resolve the Hubble tension, corresponding to a 4% change in G at a look-back time of 73 Myr and an 11% change at 130 Myr, are excluded at significances of 3.1σ and 4.0σ, respectively.
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BibTeX
@misc{sakstein2026stars,
title = {{Stars Would Remember a Recent Gravitational Transition: Testing G-step Resolutions of the Hubble Tension with Red Dwarfs}},
author = {Jeremy Sakstein and Harry Desmond},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.04048},
eprint = {2610.04048},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.04048},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Stars Would Remember a Recent Gravitational Transition: Testing G-step Resolutions of the Hubble Tension with Red Dwarfs
AU - Jeremy Sakstein
AU - Harry Desmond
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/02
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.04048
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.04048
AB - We test the hypothesis that Newton's gravitational constant underwent a rapid transition approximately $73−130\,{\rm Myr}$ ago, as proposed in some resolutions of the Hubble tension. Fully convective red dwarf stars with masses below ∼0.35 M_⊙ have thermal timescales comparable to the proposed transition look-back times, so an appreciable present-day memory can remain. We show that a rapid step in G induces measurable changes in their radii and confront these predictions with mass-radius measurements of eight red dwarfs in detached eclipsing binaries. We find that the G-step models proposed to resolve the Hubble tension, corresponding to a 4% change in G at a look-back time of 73 Myr and an 11% change at 130 Myr, are excluded at significances of 3.1σ and 4.0σ, respectively.
ER -