Theory of Global Time: Canonical Order, Operational Time, and History Immutability

This work develops a physical theory of global time in which temporal structure arises from the observer-side reconstruction of event order rather than from a pre-existing temporal parameter. The fundamental observable entities are reception events produced by distributed physical sources and registered by reception nodes. A canonical order relation defined on the set of reception events generates the primary temporal structure from which temporal history is reconstructed. Within this framework time is not assumed as a background coordinate and is not defined through synchronized clocks or spacetime metric postulates. Instead, time emerges as an operational parameter constructed along a canonical history of events reconstructed from distributed signal reception. If kkk denotes the canonical index enumerating the reconstructed order, the evolution of operational time is governed by dt₍global₎/dk = Δt₍global₎(k) so that global time appears as an integral over canonical temporal history. A central result of the theory is the dynamical immutability of reconstructed history. Once a segment of canonical order has been established, no subsequent expansion of observation — including additional sources, reception nodes, or higher-resolution data — can retroactively modify the temporal ordering or assigned time values of past events. Temporal history therefore evolves by irreversible growth rather than revision. The proposed framework provides an operational mechanism for constructing global temporal order through distributed reception of repeatable signals, such as those emitted by astrophysical sources. The resulting canonical temporal structure is invariant under signal delay, reordering, spatial separation of observers, and expansion of the observational infrastructure. Metric notions of time and clock models appear only as secondary representations imposed on an already established temporal order. The predictive content of the theory lies in constraints on the admissible behavior of time itself. In particular, the framework forbids observer-dependent divergence of global time within shared reconstruction domains, excludes retroactive modification of reconstructed temporal history, and predicts convergence of independently reconstructed time parameters as observational coverage increases. In this sense, physical time is interpreted as the irreversible growth of canonical temporal history reconstructed from observer-registered events.