Planck 2018 measures the CMB lensing amplitude parameter A_lens = 1.18 ± 0.065, a 2σ excess above the value of 1.00 the model predicts (Planck 2018; Addison 2016). The CMB is lensed roughly 18% more strongly than the best-fit ΛCDM matter distribution sources, persisting across data cuts and analysis methods. No accepted systematic accounts for the gap.
The standard model assumes all gravitational lensing of the CMB is sourced by the catalogued matter distribution between us and the surface of last scattering. Under that assumption, A_lens must equal 1 by construction, and any persistent excess implies either uncatalogued matter, modified gravity, or a systematic error.
SCT replaces the hot-dense-center with a superluminal collision and the thermalized debris field that became our visible universe. From this single change, the gravitational potential acquires a coherent contribution from the parent-frame mesh that ΛCDM has no concept of. Comoving baryonic structures in shared parent frames contribute coherently rather than incoherently to the gravitational potential at distant points: Φ_eff(r) = Φ_local(r) + Φ_mesh(r), where Φ_local is the locally catalogued matter and Φ_mesh is the constructive-superposition contribution from parent-frame embedding (P50, P51, P52).
CMB photons traveling from z ≈ 1100 to us are deflected by the full effective potential, not just the locally catalogued part. The boundary condition S(z₀) ≈ 4.4 (the present-day mesh contribution that produces the observed dark-matter-equivalent in galaxy halos) integrated over the lensing kernel gives an excess lensing amplitude of about 17 to 18%. The Planck A_lens = 1.18 measurement is a direct fingerprint of the same coherent-mesh mechanism that produces flat rotation curves without a CDM particle (P53, P54). It is parameter-free in sign and magnitude.
The same mechanism resolves the cluster-substructure GGSL excess (Meneghetti et al. 2020), the cluster-mass discrepancy between weak-lensing and kinematic estimates, and the σ₈ tension family. There is no need for an additional dark-matter species, no modification of gravity, and no fine-tuned cancellation. The excess lensing was always the expected outcome of removing the hot-dense-center and acknowledging that gravitational potentials carry parent-frame coherent contributions on top of the locally visible matter.
Future CMB lensing measurements (CMB-S4, Simons Observatory) converging to A_lens = 1.000 ± 0.005 would refute the coherent-mesh-lensing mechanism. Independently, if the cluster-mass mesh-contribution prediction (S(z₀) ≈ 4.4 boundary condition) is found to be inconsistent across surveys at greater than 3σ, the M6 framework loses one of its falsifiable handles.