A Falsifiable Alternative to General Relativity

Asymptotically Weyl-invariant gravity (AWIG) is further developed within the Palatini formalism as a power-counting renormalizable alternative to general relativity (GR). An expression for the dimensionless exponent n® is derived based on dynamical dimensional reduction. We show that this version of AWIG naturally resolves several theoretical issues normally associated with the Palatini formalism. A falsifiable prediction regarding the frequency of gravitational waves from binary black hole mergers is made. A preliminary analysis of gravitational wave GW150914 yields a maximum tension of 0.9σ with GR and marginally favours AWIG. A similar analysis of gravitational wave GW151226 yields a maximum tension of 2.7σ with GR and favours AWIG more significantly.