Tachyonic Quenched Spacetime (TQS) proposes that classical spacetime arises as a condensed, elastic phase of an underlying discrete relational substrate, following a pre-geometric tachyonic instability and global quench. Here, “tachyonic” refers solely to a negative-curvature instability in configuration space prior to the emergence of locality, time, or propagation, and does not imply superluminal dynamics or the existence of faster-than-light particles. Starting from minimal ontological assumptions—absolute null as an operational boundary, the emergence of relational capacity, and finite-dimensional resolution—this framework argues that perfect nonlocality is unstable once differentiation becomes admissible. The resulting quench freezes residual correlations into extended relational structures, which subsequently interlock to form a disordered, elastic network. In the long-wavelength limit, the shear response of this network reproduces Einsteinian gravity as an infrared universality class, while resolving classical singularities through finite reconfiguration capacity. Within the condensed phase, physical processes are interpreted as lattice reconfiguration dynamics. Time emerges as reconciliation accounting between distinct reconfiguration histories rather than as a fundamental parameter. Photons are identified with propagating chains of incremental bond updates that transport energy and momentum without persistent defects, while neutrinos arise as minimal stabilized defects exporting irreducible reconfiguration mismatch near criticality. Quantum entanglement corresponds to deferred relational bookkeeping prior to causal contact, and smooth worldline reunions follow from amortized reconciliation rather than instantaneous collapse. The framework further identifies a necessary microscopic resolution scale set by reconciliation locality, admitting neither arbitrarily small nor arbitrarily large relational elements. This naturally yields a finite lattice scale without imposing a cutoff by hand. Disorder at the microscopic level emerges as a structural consequence of capacity resolution, suppressing preferred frames while permitting curvature, wave propagation, and defect motion. TQS does not attempt a full derivation of the Standard Model. However, it identifies ontological slots for matter-like secondary defects, electromagnetic interactions as organized bond-update dynamics, and weak and strong interactions as threshold and confinement phenomena of the same substrate. The result is a mechanically coherent pathway from pre-geometric null to emergent spacetime, gravity, and quantum phenomena, without introducing additional background structures, preferred frames, or violations of emergent relativistic causality.
Jerad Happe (Fri,) studied this question.