Universal Ticks and Emergent Gravity: A Testable Preferred-Time Framework

Modern physics provides exceptionally accurate predictions, yet leaves open interpretational questions about time ordering and the origin of gravitation. This preprint proposes a unified framework built on two connected ideas: (1) universal ticks, where physical reality updates in discrete steps with a single global event order; and (2) emergent gravity, where mass–energy reduces the local “free update capacity” of space, slowing local processes and producing gravitational phenomena as gradients in that capacity. In this view, relativistic effects arise because local clock rates and signal propagation depend on available update capacity, while the global tick order remains fundamental. The paper adopts the constraint that the “cosmic metronome” defines the ticks and does not redshift; apparent time dilation is attributed to local physics running with fewer free updates per tick near mass–energy. The paper outlines qualitative implications for gravitational redshift, universality of free fall, lensing as an effective graded-index medium, and wave-like disturbances as changes in the binding pattern, and it proposes falsifiable experimental signatures (including cross-lab correlations in high-precision interferometers) with null tests and failure modes.