Propagation and Persistence: A Two-Layer Ontology for Mass, Time, Gravity, and Gauge Coupling

This work presents a revised two-layer propagation–persistence interpretation of inertia, mass, radiation, gauge coupling, and gravity. The framework distinguishes between Layer 1, the propagation layer associated with momentum, phase, causal conduction, field propagation, and update structure, and Layer 2, the persistence layer associated with localization, rest mass, inertia, stable identity, bound structure, and classical records. The central proposal is that mass is not primitive inert substance, but Layer-1 propagation constrained into Layer-2 persistence. Momentum is interpreted as a Layer-1 propagation attribute, while rest mass is represented by a coupled momentum-equivalent (\pi_m = mc), such that (mc^2 = \pi_m c). Photons represent free Layer-1 propagation, while massive particles represent propagation internally stabilized into persistent identity. Gravity is reinterpreted as a modification of Layer-1 propagation geometry sourced by total propagation content. This includes free radiation momentum, internal randomized motion such as heat, pressure and stress, field energy, and propagation content coupled into Layer-2 mass. In this reading, what general relativity describes through the stress-energy tensor is interpreted as bookkeeping for free and coupled propagation content rather than as gravity sourced by inert substance alone. The framework remains interpretational and phenomenological. It does not replace the Einstein field equations, quantum mechanics, gauge theory, or the Standard Model. Instead, it proposes a conceptual reorganization in which inertia, rest energy, kinetic energy, thermal energy, gauge coupling, gravitational lensing, and black-hole horizons are described through the relation between propagation and persistence. This version substantially supersedes the earlier “propagation constraint and reconfiguration burden” formulation. The previous burden-gradient description of gravity is replaced by a Layer-1 propagation-geometry interpretation, and the earlier persistence-burden language is reformulated in terms of coupled Layer-1 propagation stabilized as Layer-2 persistence.