BCB Record-Theoretic Emergence of Spacetime Geometry and Gravitational Dynamics

A New Way to Think About Space, Time, and Gravity

What if space and time aren’t fundamental ingredients of reality?

What if they emerge from something deeper — from the physics of irreversible information?

That’s the central idea behind this work.

Every physical event leaves a mark. A photon hits a detector. A particle decays. A brain registers a memory. Something irreversible happens — a “record” is created. Once that record exists, it can’t be un-happened. The universe has committed a distinction.

This paper starts from that simple observation and builds upward.

It asks: if reality is built from the creation and flow of irreversible records, what must the structure of physics look like?

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BCB: The Universe as a Balance of Commitments

At the core of the framework is something called the Balance of Commitment and Flow (BCB).

If records are being created locally (commitment density), and information can move between regions (commitment flux), then there must be a conservation-style balance law. In mathematical language, that balance law naturally forms a four-component object — just like energy and momentum form a four-vector in relativity.

That’s not aesthetic. It’s forced.

Once you demand:

• Irreversibility,
• Locality,
• Finite information capacity,
• And symmetry between inertial observers,

you are pushed directly into a relativistic structure. A maximum speed appears. Lorentz transformations appear. Proper time appears.

Relativity isn’t assumed — it falls out of the rules governing record creation.

In this picture, spacetime geometry emerges from how records are created, distinguished, and transported.

Gravity, then, becomes the large-scale response of this commitment field to the presence of mass-energy. Mass doesn’t just curve spacetime — it sources record commitment. The geometry adjusts accordingly.

In the weak-field limit, the familiar equation$$\nabla^2 \Phi = 4\pi G \rho$$

drops out of this balance law.

And at large scales, under mild regularity assumptions, the only consistent second-derivative metric equation is Einstein’s equation.

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TPB: The Cost of Writing Reality

Alongside BCB, the paper covers an interpretive tool called Ticks-Per-Bit (TPB).

TPB measures something very simple:

How many fundamental substrate “ticks” are required to commit one irreversible bit of information?

In ordinary life, we never think about this. But if reality is built from record creation, then every physical system has an information cost.

Here’s the striking result:

• When an object moves fast, TPB increases.
• When an object sits deep in a gravitational field, TPB increases.
• Near a black hole horizon, TPB diverges.

That’s exactly the behavior of time dilation.

In relativity, moving clocks run slow.
In gravity, clocks deeper in a well run slow.

In the BCB/TPB picture, the explanation is informational:

• Motion consumes part of the substrate’s processing capacity because the system is sweeping through space at near the causal limit.
• Gravity increases local commitment density, creating informational congestion.
• In both cases, it costs more substrate updates to commit a single bit.

Time dilation becomes an accounting effect.

Not a mystery — not a warping of an abstract dimension — but a change in the cost of writing reality.

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What the Paper Actually Claims

The paper does not claim to replace general relativity.

Instead, it shows:

1. If irreversible records obey five simple operational rules, special relativity emerges.
2. If record commitment responds locally to energy, Newton’s law of gravity emerges.
3. Under reasonable infrared assumptions, Einstein’s equation is the unique leading-order structure.
4. Gravitational waves have exactly two polarizations and travel at the speed of light — matching LIGO observations.
5. Any deviations would appear only at extremely small (Planck-scale) distances.

The framework is honest about what remains open — especially how the microscopic record process works in full quantum gravity.

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The Big Picture

BCB reframes gravity as the large-scale bookkeeping of irreversible information.

TPB reframes time dilation as the changing computational cost of committing reality.

Space and time stop being fundamental scaffolding and instead become emergent consequences of how the universe processes and preserves distinctions.

Whether this is the final answer or not, it suggests something profound:

The fabric of spacetime may not be geometry first and information second.
It may be information first — and geometry as its shadow.

If This Framework Is Right

If this picture turns out to be correct — even approximately — its implications would be profound. It would mean that space and time are not fundamental ingredients of reality, but emergent consequences of how the universe creates and preserves information. Gravity would no longer be a mysterious geometric force acting on a pre-existing stage; it would be the large-scale bookkeeping rule that keeps irreversible records consistent across the cosmos. The constants we treat as fundamental — like the speed of light or Newton’s gravitational constant — would reflect deep limits in information processing rather than arbitrary properties of spacetime. In that sense, relativity would not just describe how the universe behaves; it would describe how the universe writes itself. Whether this framework ultimately survives experimental and theoretical scrutiny remains an open question — but if it does, it would reshape how we understand the relationship between physics, information, and reality itself.