What if space and time emerge later?

Let’s imagine an empty stage.

It has width, height and depth. An invisible clock runs above it. Particles then enter the stage and begin to move.

This is how most of us intuitively imagine the universe: space and time are the finished stage, matter is the actor and the laws of physics are the script.

The generic ITHKOR asks the opposite:

What if events do not occur in space and time? What if it is their mutual relations that create what we later measure as distance, direction and passage of time?

In such a world, the stage would not exist before the performance.

It would arise together with the performance.

Reader Agreement: This is a thought experiment. The experimental islands of Special ITHKOR so far have not derived physical space-time, Einstein’s equations, or gravity. Some bridges to probe motion and universality have even explicitly failed. In this article, we are imagining a larger hypothesis, not a finished result.

Events rather than coordinates

Let’s start with no space.

We only have events.

One event can affect another. Some pairs are independent of each other. Each event can carry local state and a record of what it originated from.

From this we get the causal network:

A could affect B;
B could affect C;
D was temporarily independent from this line;
E was created only after the joint meeting of two branches.

In this network, we do not yet need universal coordinates x, y, z or a single cosmic time t.

We only have a rank of possible influence.

This is surprisingly close to relativity. Einstein’s physics no longer allows for one absolute “now” valid for the entire universe. Different observers may divide distant events into contemporaneous and noncontemporaneous events differently, but still agree on a causal order where one event may have affected another.

A generic ITHKOR could start with just this minimum:

causal order first, then coordinates.

Time as a local order of changes

What would time be in such a world?

Not a river that flows evenly throughout the universe.

Rather, the local number and structure of changes.

A clock would not read an invisible cosmic variable. They would themselves be a physical process: the oscillation of an atom, the circulation of a body, the transition between states or the regular creation of records.

Time could be understood as a combination of three layers:

causal order – what could have arisen before what;
local progress – how many physical changes have passed along a specific trajectory;
record arrow – which events left traces in later states.

This would explain why different clocks can measure different times between two meetings. Every hour they will take their own path through the network of events.

But be careful: this is just an architectural intuition for now.

To be physically valid, ITHKOR would have to derive exactly the time dilation measured by special and general relativity. Not approximately. Not poetically. Exactly.

Space as an availability map

If space is not a finished container, what does distance mean?

Maybe not the number of meters between two pre-existing points.

Maybe it’s the cost, difficulty, or number of local steps needed to transfer influence between two regions.

Two events would be close if there are many short and stable links between them.

They would be far away if the influence has to spread over a long or narrow network.

The geometry could thus be reconstructed from information availability:

what is connected to what;
how quickly the change can be transferred;
how many independent paths exist;
how the density of available states changes;
and how the presence of the source distorts these possibilities.

In the graphical model, the effective dimension can even be measured without manually entering it. We count how many nodes lie within the distance r. If the count grows to about r^d, the network behaves as if it has a dimension of d on a large scale.

Thus “three dimensions of space” would not be an input.

They could be the result of a stable phase of the network.

But this is one of the most difficult tasks: to show why dimension three would appear robustly and not just because a programmer inserted it into the graph generator.

The speed of light is not the clock speed of the processor

With the first informational metaphors, it is tempting to say:

The speed of light is the maximum processor speed of the universe.

That sounds impressive, but physically it’s too weak.

In relativity, it’s not just that the signal has a maximum speed. The value c is part of the entire geometric structure of space-time. All inertial observers will measure the same invariant velocity even though they are moving relative to each other. This results in time dilation, length contraction, the relationship between energy and momentum, and the causal structure.

If General ITHKOR were valid, c could be created as:

maximum slope of causal influence allowed by local network rules.

That’s a better wording than “bandwidth”. However, it is still not enough.

The theory would have to show:

why is the border the same in all directions;
why it does not depend on the movement of the observer;
why the privileged frame does not appear at low energies;
why Lorentz transformations will arise from it;
and why all deviations are smaller than today’s experimental limits.

If it cannot do that, it has merely renamed the speed of light.

Could gravity be an information response?

This is the most tempting and at the same time the most dangerous step.

General relativity says that energy and momentum are related to the curvature of spacetime. The bodies then do not move because an invisible hand pulls them, but because they follow the geometry.

If geometry is emergent, a natural question arises:

Can the presence of energy or high information density change the very network of available paths?

In the information image, the source could:

change local capacity;
rearrange link weights;
influence the number of available roads;
change the cost of signal propagation;
and thereby create an effective metric.

Such an idea is not completely alone in physics.

Jacobson showed that Einstein’s equations can, under certain assumptions, be read as a thermodynamic equation of state. Ryu and Takayanagi related the entanglement entropy to the area of the geometric surface in holographic models. Van Raamsdonk argued that space-time connectivity is closely related to quantum entanglement. Faulkner and co-authors showed in a holographic context the relationship between the first law of entanglement and the linearized gravity equations.

This does not mean that “gravity is solved by information”.

It means that the question posed by ITHKOR has serious scientific neighbors.

Where does ITHKOR actually stand today?

Special ITHKOR has already explored small source-response, modular-response, coarse-graining and internal-order diagnostics.

Some of them have created narrow islands of validity.

At the same time, however, important bridges were not crossed:

the source response did not change to the general law of probe motion;
free fall was not derived;
the universality of different classes of probes has not been confirmed;
the equivalence principle was not derived;
physical space-time was not obtained.

That’s good to know especially with a bold article.

The idea may be interesting and small mathematical patterns may hold, but there is a vast gap between “response in a finite model” and gravity.

What would change if space emerged?

Distance would not be an absolute backdrop

It could be a network state property. Two regions could become effectively closer or further apart if the structure of their ties changes.

Geometry would have a microscopic origin

Just as temperature arises from the joint behavior of molecules, curvature could arise from the joint behavior of information relations.

Singularity could be a failure of effective description

If smooth spacetime is only a macroscopic layer, its singularity need not imply an infinite “thing” in nature. It may signal that effective geometry has ceased to be an appropriate language.

Quantum gravity would not be sought by quantizing finished geometry

Perhaps it would be searched for in the microscopic states from which geometry arises – just as quantizing a sound wave is not the same as searching for the atoms that make up air.

This is precisely the intuition that Jacobson also emphasized in his work.

Seven gates through which the theory would have to pass

1. Emergent dimension 3+1

Three spatial dimensions and one temporal direction must be created without manual adjustment.

2. Lorentz invariance

The low-energy world must not reveal the hidden grid or preferred framework.

3. Einstein’s equations

In the appropriate limit, the information mechanism must reproduce general relativity.

4. Equivalence principle

Different objects must respond universally to gravity in the appropriate mode.

5. Newtonian and post-Newtonian limit

The theory must explain orbits, gravitational redshift, precession, lensing, and precise tests in the Solar System.

6. Gravitational waves

It must reproduce their velocities, polarizations and the observed collision courses of compact objects.

7. New difference

The theory must identify a regime where it departs from general relativity — and risk being refuted.

Without these gates, “information space-time” is not a physical theory. It is only in the direction.

What we know, what we assume and what is missing

What we know: Relativity does not contain a universal global “now”. Causal structure, geometry, energy and time are deeply interconnected. In the holographic and thermodynamic approaches, there are precise connections between entropy, entanglement, and geometry.

What General ITHKOR would assume: Space and time are effective properties of a network of local information events; resources change the available relationships and thus the emergent metric.

What to prove: Derive 3+1 dimensional Lorentz invariant spacetime, Einstein’s equations, equivalence principle and a new falsifiable difference.

The deepest operating system may not have a clock

If General ITHKOR were valid, the universe would not have to have a central clock.

Each region would only process local events. Global history would not be created according to a single timer, but by composing consistent relationships between countless local events.

The space would be a map of what can connect with what.

Time would tell what could leave a mark on what.

And gravity might not be another force embedded in the finished world, but the way the information map itself reacts to its content.

That would be a beautifully simple image.

Now the idea still needs equations that will allow it to survive contact with reality.

Series: If General ITHKOR were true — part 2/4
Previous part: Information before matter
Next part: Why 1/137?
Current project map: ITHKOR theory

Space and time as outcomes: what if the universe has no common clock?