The Wave Favouritism Theory of Spacetime (WF-S): A Unified Framework for Quantum Measurement, Entropy, and Cosmic Structure

This paper presents The Wave Favouritism Theory of Spacetime (WF–S), Part I, a foundations-level framework addressing the quantum measurement problem. WF–S targets the selection gap left open by decoherence and Quantum Darwinism: while these approaches explain the suppression of interference and the emergence of robust pointer states, they do not provide a dynamical account of why one particular outcome becomes the stable macroscopic record in a given experimental run. WF–S proposes a minimal, testable mechanism in which quantum measurement is treated as a finite-time physical process of irreversible record formation in open systems. The framework introduces a real scalar substrate field that couples locally to the standard complex quantum amplitude field through a minimal interaction term. The closed-system dynamics of the combined fields are unitary and generated by a Hermitian Lagrangian. Apparent randomness and irreversibility arise only at the effective level, after coarse-graining and tracing over uncontrolled environmental and substrate degrees of freedom. In measurement regimes, alternative outcomes may differ in the degree to which they irreversibly imprint information into unobserved degrees of freedom. WF–S proposes that these differences enter the effective description through a dimensionless entropy-based proxy, leading to entropy-conditioned outcome weights. When the operational record-bias is uniform across competing alternatives, the framework reduces exactly to the standard Born rule. In this sense, the Born rule emerges as the entropy-uniform limit of a more general record-formation mechanism. The paper is deliberately conservative in scope. Its primary contributions are: (i) a minimal two-field Lagrangian consistent with locality, Lorentz invariance, and boundedness; (ii) a clear separation between closed-system unitary dynamics and effective open-system irreversibility; and (iii) a falsifiable measurement-sector prediction, formulated as swap-protected, sign-definite deviations from Born statistics under engineered record-asymmetry. A conservative falsification ladder and experimental protocols are presented, with emphasis on near-term testability using existing quantum platforms. This work is intended as a foundations framework rather than a completed theory of all interactions. Extensions to complex substrates, matter structure, forces, and cosmology are outlined at a programme level and deferred to subsequent papers. If WF–S is incorrect, it is designed to fail cleanly through explicit measurement-sector tests; if it survives, it offers a concrete dynamical route toward understanding how quantum possibilities become stable physical records.