Mass, Proper Time, and Gravity: A geometric-informational interpretation through the Compton phase and proper time

This paper proposes a unifying interpretation of the relationship between information, proper time, mass, and gravity. The physical ingredients are well known: the limiting speed c, the Lorentz transformations, invariant mass, rest energy, the Compton frequency, proper time, the quantum phase, and the equations of general relativity. The proposed novelty is not the discovery of these elements but their connection into a single conceptual and operational chain. Observers reconstruct spacetime coordinates from the information that reaches them, constrained by the limiting speed c; coordinate time is therefore an operational construction. Proper time is the physical parameter along which the rhythm or phase of a system accumulates. For a massive system, the invariant mass m defines a rest energy E0 = mc² and, through the Planck-Einstein relation, a Compton angular frequency omegaC = mc²/hbar. The phase associated with mass accumulates along proper time, dphi = omegaC dtau. In a static gravitational field dtau = sqrt (g00) dt, so gravity can be read as a metric modification of the accumulation of proper phase; in the weak field the phase difference between two heights is Delta phi = m g Delta h T / hbar (the Colella-Overhauser-Werner result). Central formulation: mass sets the scale of the rhythm, proper time accumulates it, and gravity modifies the accumulation through the metric. This is not a new prediction beyond quantum mechanics and general relativity, but a conceptual and partly operational synthesis. The paper also discusses why the Einstein field equation is the natural endpoint of the chain, and the empirical equivalence with the standard Einstein interpretation (the underlying structure implies no detectable privileged frame).