Gravity as Temporal Constraint: Degrees of Freedom, Mass Formation, and the Arrow of Time

Gravity is conventionally described as spacetime curvature sourced by stress–energy, yet this description does not explicitly identify what physical property of matter produces curvature or why gravitational effects are dominated by temporal distortion. In this paper, we propose a structure-first interpretation in which gravity emerges from the removal of temporal degrees of freedom. When energy becomes persistently bound into structure (mass), the number of admissible future states available to local time evolution is reduced. This narrowing forces matter to follow constrained forward trajectories aligned with the global arrow of time, manifesting as gravitational behavior. Environments that restore degrees of freedom, such as microgravity, exhibit the inverse effect: expanded configurational freedom and reversible dynamics. This framework is consistent with general relativity, reinterprets the stress–energy tensor as a measure of temporal rigidity, and provides a unifying explanation for gravitational time dilation, inertial motion, and the emergence of mass without invoking gravity as a force.