Gravity as Collapse: The Emergence of Determinism from the Quantum Future
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This paper proposes that gravity is not a fundamental force acting within quantum mechanics, but rather the geometric consequence of the collapse of probabilistic quantum states (the “future”) into deterministic configurations (the “present”). Quantum and statistical mechanics describe a probabilistic future composed of superposed possibilities that do not obey general relativity. Observation or interaction collapses this probabilistic state into a single realized present that alone satisfies the deterministic structure of spacetime geometry. We show that this collapse can be formalized as a transition from a probabilistic measure on Hilbert space to a deterministic metric measure on spacetime, with spacetime curvature proportional to the local density of collapse events. In this view, gravity is the cumulative geometric record of continuous future-to-present collapses, while time emerges as the procedural ordering of these transitions. Renormalization between the quantum and relativistic domains fails because they inhabit fundamentally different manifolds - probabilistic and deterministic. The interface between these domains, termed the inflection manifold, represents the critical point where quantum symmetry breaks and gravity, as the persistent manifestation of collapse, comes into being.
Author: Low, Dunstan
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7084592192
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