Black Holes as Temporal Anchors

Black Holes as Temporal Anchors presents the provisional Black Holes branch master of Phase Theory. The paper develops a structural interpretation of black holes in which the event horizon remains a regular one-way causal boundary within general relativity, while a distinct terminal no-phase boundary is proposed at the limit of parent-phase resolution. Within this framework, a phase is defined as a complete conjugate oscillatory cycle between positive and negative potentials. Time, geometry, motion and geodesic trajectories are treated as observer-level reconstructions arising from nested phase relations rather than as fundamental background structures. Phase contraction is therefore distinguished from ordinary physical compression: it describes the progressive loss of independently resolvable phase differentiation and reference structure. At the terminal boundary, no internally constructible parent-phase time or geometry remains. This condition does not imply absolute nothingness or absence of underlying substance; it denotes the absence of resolvable phase reference within the parent domain. The same underlying boundary may be terminal relative to a contracting parent phase and initial relative to an emerging daughter phase, without requiring a universal external time connecting the two. The paper also examines information accessibility, gravitational redshift, entropy, geodesic incompleteness and the possible opening of time through a minimal closed phase-cycle. Daughter-phase emergence, white-hole analogies, phase lookback and cosmological development are retained as clearly identified speculative extensions. Mathematical construction, Kerr generalisation, thermodynamic completion and black-hole-specific observational validation remain open research requirements. keywords: Phase Theory; black holes; event horizons; geodesic incompleteness; relational time; phase contraction; information accessibility; singularity; white holes; quantum gravity.