The accelerated universe and the Moon

Cosmologically motivated theories that explain the small acceleration rate of the Universe via the modification of gravity at very large, horizon, or superhorizon distances, can be tested by precision gravitational measurements at much shorter scales, such as the Earth-Moon distance. Contrary to the naive expectation the predicted corrections to the Einsteinian metric near gravitating sources are so significant that they might fall within the sensitivity of the proposed Lunar Ranging experiments. The key reason for such corrections is the van Dam–Veltman–Zakharov discontinuity present in linearized versions of all such theories, and its subsequent absence at the nonlinear level in the manner of Vainshtein.