Testing Consecutive Epochs of Cosmic Expansion against Type Ia Supernovae Observations as a Phenomenological Alternative to Explain the Observed Curvature in the Hubble Diagram

A paradigm shift that revolutionised cosmology and established mysterious dark energy as a dominant component of the Universe unveiled through the startling discovery of cosmic acceleration from type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) observations. Here, I present and test a phenomenological alternative in which the observed curvature in the SNe Ia Hubble diagram, attributed to cosmic acceleration, arises as a result of consecutive epochs of cosmic expansion, wherein one expansion epoch of the Universe is consecutively followed by the next. Overlaying the predicted distances for consecutively-expanding particles (particles entering the Hubble flow consecutively – one particle after another) and the ΛCDM predictions on the Pantheon+ SNe Ia Hubble diagram, I find that the proposed model tracks the observed curvature of the Pantheon+ SNe Ia Hubble diagram over the tested redshift range, suggesting that consecutive expansion epochs may provide a viable alternative explanation why distant or high-redshift SNe Ia are further away than expected.