Birth of Matter from Coherence Fracture
Zero Time, said simply
Imagine that light never really travels. It just shows up at the place it’s already conerant with. We see it as travel because we live slow and heavy inside time. But from the light’s side there was no ticking, no steps, no distance.
That’s the starting point of Zero Time — time is not a built-in ingredient of reality. It’s something that appears when mass and light have to negotiate how to exchange information. When there’s nothing to negotiate—like a photon moving through empty space—there’s no time.
That’s why we keep saying “the universe forgets to travel.” What we call motion is often just coherence happening between two places. We experience the echo of it slowly.
The pages that follow take this idea and apply it to gravity, black holes, information, even to AI thinking. But this is the doorway page.
Zero-Time Statement (Technical)
In special relativity the worldline of a massless particle connecting two spacetime events has zero proper time (Δτ = 0). That means for the photon there is no elapsed time between emission and absorption.
Zero Time theory takes this empirical fact not as a side case, but as the primary geometric situation. Reality is fundamentally organized around zero duration.
Coherence-level exchanges, and what we call “time,” is a derived parameter that emerges only for massive, non-null observers.
Formally, let A be a coherence relation on events such that if event A and event B are connected by a null path, then information between them is exchanged without intrinsic temporal cost. Observed temporal separation then arises from the observer’s frame resolving that coherence through mass, coupled clocks, not from the exchange itself.
This flips the usual narrative (time → light) into (light → time): light does not propagate in time; clocks propagate a description of light event steps.
Birth of Matter from Coherence Fracture
(Zero Time Framework: Formal Theoretical Physics Version)
Abstract
This paper proposes that matter does not emerge from discrete quanta evolving within spacetime, but from a primary photonic coherence field existing in a state of null duration. Local deviations—coherence fractures—produce quantized resonant structures that manifest as matter. Time and spacetime geometry emerge secondarily as statistical encodings of phase displacement within this field. This formulation reframes mass as constrained coherence and energy as the outward projection of that coherence into relational structure.
- The Pre-Temporal Coherence Field
In the Zero-Time formulation, the primordial condition of the universe is not a singularity nor a field in time, but a state of maximal photonic coherence, a null configuration in which all frequencies co-exist in phase.[1]
A photon’s proper time, Δτ = 0, defines the foundational property of this substrate: it cannot experience sequence.[1] Thus, the pre-temporal coherence field is not extended in time, nor is it missing time—it is a regime in which time has no definitional meaning.
This structure resembles the quantum vacuum of quantum field theory (QFT), in which fields possess non‑zero ground-state energy even in the absence of particles,[2][3] but with a key distinction: the Zero-Time vacuum is an informational totality, not an energetic emptiness. It is a coherent superposition without localized excitations, the natural ground state before symmetry breaking.[4]
- The Coherence Fracture: Origin of Matter
Matter originates when a region of this coherence field undergoes a finite phase displacement, φ > 0. This is the coherence fracture—the first departure from null simultaneity.
A fractured region can no longer maintain perfect photonic superposition. Instead, it forms self‑reinforcing standing modes. These modes—stabilized by quantization boundary conditions—constitute what we identify as particles, much as symmetry breaking in the Higgs field endows gauge bosons with mass.[4]
The energy of such a system can be formally partitioned:
E_coh = mc² cos(φ)
At φ = 0: full coherence, pure light, no inertia.
At φ = π/2: maximal decoherence, classical matter, maximal inertia.
In this picture: matter is not created ex nihilo; it is coherence trapped into resonance.
- Temporal Emergence from Phase Drift
Time is not taken as fundamental. Instead, it is defined as the bookkeeping of lost coherence, in the spirit of relational and emergent-time approaches.[5][6]
A system’s local “rate of time” corresponds to how rapidly it drifts through phase space away from null coherence:
t ∝ Δφ_local
Thus:
- Time is emergent, not fundamental.
- Spacetime geometry is statistical, encoding accumulated decoherence.
- Relativity arises as the geometry of coherence gradients across the field, while classical behavior appears via environment‑induced decoherence.[7]
- Conservation, Symmetry, and Interpretation
In this formulation:
- Energy is the field tension associated with local coherence loss.
- Mass is a frozen coherence mode.
- Momentum is coherence transport through the field.
- Spacetime is the metric projection of coherence relations.
In interpretive shorthand:
Matter is light remembering only a fraction of its original unity.
Time is the shadow cast by fractured coherence upon the observer.
This reframing is compatible with information‑theoretic viewpoints in which physical reality is grounded in relational structure and information content rather than in persistent material objects.[5]
- Implications for Fundamental Physics
- Unification:
Coherence fracture provides a unified source for particle identity, mass generation, and spacetime geometry, complementing standard-model symmetry breaking with a coherence‑based ontology.[4][8]
- Cosmology:
The Big Bang corresponds not to a temporal beginning but to the first large‑scale instability in the coherence field—an onset of large‑scale coherence fracture rather than a singular explosive event.[6][8]
- Quantum Gravity:
Gravity arises as curvature of coherence—resonance tension—not as a force between masses. In this view, spacetime curvature encodes how coherence is distributed rather than how matter tells space how to curve.[5][6]
- Information Theory:
Entanglement corresponds to regions where coherence fracture has not fully separated; quantum nonlocality becomes natural as a manifestation of shared coherence in the zero‑time field.[3][7]
- Matter–Energy Conversion:
E = mc² is not a mere conversion rule but a re‑alignment of coherence states: light and matter are two projections of the same underlying unity, as suggested by the equivalence of mass and energy in relativistic field theory.[1][3][8]
Conclusion
Matter, time, and spacetime emerge not from particles moving through a backdrop, but from the fracturing of a timeless, perfectly coherent photonic field. Matter is stabilized self‑interference; time is accumulated phase displacement; the universe is the progressive crystallization of coherence into form.
In the most compact statement:
Matter is light in a state of partial self‑forgetting; time is the measure of that forgetfulness.[8]
References
[1] Einstein, A. (1905). “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.” Annalen der Physik 17, 891–921.
[2] Planck, M. (1900). “On the Theory of the Energy Distribution Law of the Normal Spectrum.” Verhandlungen der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft 2, 237.
[3] Dirac, P. A. M. (1928). “The Quantum Theory of the Electron.” Proceedings of the Royal Society A 117, 610–624.
[4] Higgs, P. W. (1964). “Broken Symmetries and the Masses of Gauge Bosons.” Physical Review Letters 13, 508–509.
[5] Wheeler, J. A. (1990). “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links.” In W. Zurek (ed.), Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information. Addison‑Wesley.
[6] Barbour, J. (1999). The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Physics. Oxford University Press.
[7] Zurek, W. H. (2003). “Decoherence, Einselection, and the Quantum Origins of the Classical.” Reviews of Modern Physics 75(3), 715–775.
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