Some analyses of Planck + ground-based tSZ data suggest excess power at intermediate scales (l ~ 600-1000) or shallower slope than standard pressure profiles predict. Often confused with clustered point sources or Galactic foregrounds. If real, implies puffed-up lower-mass halos or diffuse filamentary gas hotter or more extended than predicted, potentially contradicting the small-scale deficit (Planck 2016; Bolliet 2025).
The standard model expects tSZ amplitude tracking standard cluster + WHIM pressure-profile predictions. Recovering the observed excess at intermediate scales demands either non-self-similar gas distributions or unaccounted-for hot diffuse gas reservoirs, neither of which is parsimonious.
SCT replaces the hot-dense-center with a superluminal collision and the thermalized debris field. From this single change, the SZ power excess at intermediate scales is the cascade-thermalized + born-hot cluster-gas signature. The cascade collision energy regime (P22, P23) deposits high-temperature gas at cluster-progenitor scales with thermal-energy-to-virial-energy ratio E_therm/E_vir ≈ 4.5 (Paper 4 Section 3.7), producing born-hot ICM populations.
The Plasma Equivalence Theorem (P29, P30) preserves the cascade-deposited high-temperature gas through cluster assembly. Pre-existing matter (P25) supplies the cluster-progenitor baryon content with the inherited high-temperature initial state. The SPT2349-56 detection at z = 4.3 with E_therm = 11.8 × 10⁶⁰ erg (6.4σ over TNG-Cluster predictions) is the predicted SCT signature: cascade-seeded protoclusters are born hot, contributing to the tSZ power excess at the intermediate-scale range corresponding to protocluster sizes.
Diffuse filamentary cascade-thermalized gas (cosmic-web filament infrastructure P34, P36) contributes additional intermediate-scale tSZ power beyond what standard cluster-only predictions provide. Gravitational superposition (P50, P51, P52) gives the apparent cluster + filament dynamics. The same M2 framework that resolves the y-distortion deficit (recid 26), the polarization-bump anomaly (recid 39), the ICM entropy floor (recid 126), the cool-core dichotomy (recid 215), and the broader cascade-thermodynamic cluster signatures accounts for the SZ power excess as a born-hot-cascade signature.
If precision Simons Observatory + CMB-S4 + Athena protocluster surveys find no born-hot ICM populations beyond standard hierarchical-formation predictions at the 5% level (no E_therm/E_vir ≈ 4.5 signature, no cascade-seeded protocluster excess), the M2 explanation is refuted. The signature SCT prediction is the SZ power excess matching the cascade-seeded born-hot protocluster + filamentary-gas distribution.