How Time is Made

How Time Is Made
Observation, Collapse, and the Shrinking of Accessible Futures:
A Relational and Thermodynamic Interpretation of Quantum Measurement

Abstract

Quantum mechanics presupposes a globally defined external time parameter, while general relativity admits no preferred global temporal foliation. This structural mismatch underlies the long-standing “problem of time” in quantum gravity and contributes to persistent paradoxes surrounding quantum measurement and delayed-choice phenomena. We identify this presupposition as a hidden source of these tensions and propose a conceptual inversion: quantum states are fundamentally timeless relational structures, and irreversible classical record formation locally induces temporal ordering, causal structure, and historical consistency.

Measurement is reinterpreted not as a physical collapse occurring within time, but as the physical instantiation of temporally coherent causal narratives from an atemporal relational substrate. We formalize this framework through the Future Contraction Postulate (FCP), identifying local physical time with the irreversible logarithmic contraction of accessible future state-space. A toy decoherence model operationalizes the postulate, explicitly demonstrating monotonic contraction of future-consistent macrostates under classical record formation.

The framework resolves delayed-choice and apparent retrocausal paradoxes, constrains objective-collapse and hidden-variable models, and aligns naturally with timeless approaches to quantum gravity and relativistic causal structure. Time is thus interpreted not as a fundamental dimension, but as the physical consequence of irreversible information locking — the systematic conversion of possibility into certainty.

Keywords: quantum foundations, time, entropy, measurement problem, emergent spacetime, causal structure

First Publication: January 4, 2026
© 2006 Trey Kirk
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