Modern physics usually explains the world by describing how forces act on objects as time passes. But recent discoveries suggest a different picture: instead of focusing on how things move, it may be more fundamental to ask what configurations of the world are even allowed to exist.
One place this idea appears is in particle physics, in the study of scattering — what happens when tiny particles collide and fly apart. Because these events are unpredictable in detail, physicists describe them using scattering probabilities, which simply mean the chances of different outcomes (for example, the likelihood that particles scatter in one direction rather than another). Surprisingly, modern work has shown that these probabilities can be calculated using geometry alone. In this approach, known as positive geometry, the outcomes of particle collisions are encoded in the shape of a mathematical object, without needing to track forces, motion, or even time.
Independently, the Void Energy–Regulated Space Framework (VERSF) proposes that space and time themselves are not fundamental ingredients of reality. Instead, they emerge from limits on distinguishability — how well different states of the world can be told apart — and entropy, which measures how much disorder or complexity a system carries. In VERSF, physical structure only exists where these limits allow it.
This paper shows that these two ideas are deeply connected. We demonstrate that the regions of possibility defined by VERSF — determined by thresholds on distinguishability, entropy capacity, and available energy — naturally form the same kinds of geometric shapes used in positive geometry. In this view, physical processes are governed not by equations of motion, but by whether they fit inside an allowed region of possibility.
The boundaries of these regions play a special role. They correspond to critical situations where physical structure must reorganize — moments where something new forms or breaks down. Moving through the allowed region defines a natural direction of time, while configurations that push against many boundaries at once become increasingly unlikely.
Together, these ideas suggest a unifying perspective in which geometry, probability, and time all emerge from basic limits on what can be consistently distinguished. Physics, in this view, is not primarily about what happens, but about what is allowed to happen at all.