Thermodynamic Emergence of Spacetime and Gravity

Spacetime and gravity need not be fundamental. They can emerge as the large-scale behavior of a finite network of information-processing elements obeying five simple axioms: locality, bounded memory and update speed, history-bearing updates with an irreversibility threshold, a minimum thermodynamic cost per memory write, and maximum-entropy state selection at every scale. From these axioms alone, a wave equation with a finite speed limit emerges, and Lorentz symmetry follows as directional irregularities wash out under coarse-graining. A self-consistency analysis shows that three spatial dimensions are uniquely stable under the thermodynamic constraints, though the dynamical origin of three-dimensional connectivity remains open. Einstein’s field equations arise as the unique self-consistent completion, conditional on three assumed requirements — smoothmanifold convergence of the coarse-grained metric, Fock-space regularity, and the Clausius relation applied to an acceleration horizon. Gravity’s universality follows because the thermodynamic cost of an irreversible memory write is blind to its cause. The framework yields concrete, testable predictions that distinguish it from competing approaches, and is candid about what remains open: the continuum limit, quantum mechanics, and the dynamical origin of three-dimensional connectivity. The universe, on this picture, is a dissipative information-processing network writing its own geometry one irreversible bit at a time. The framework therefore realizes Wheeler’s "It from Bit" intuition with a specific thermodynamic mechanism: it is not information per se that generates geometry, but the cost of erasing it — the Landauer heat of each irreversible memory write — that fixes the gravitational coupling and underwrites the arrow of time.