For Researchers: What's Citable

Honest novelty statement: the core obstruction is not ours. Milgrom showed MOND-as-modified-inertia must be strongly non-local (astro-ph/0510117), and the RAR/MDAR is keyed on acceleration, not density (Lelli, McGaugh & Schombert 2016; Lelli et al. 2017, scatter ≲0.13 dex). What this project adds is the quantified local-density instance: any gravity modification keyed on the local volumetric density ρ(r) fails in three independently executed ways — the SPARC RAR ensemble rejects the density-compander at ΔBIC=+184 (free fit collapses to MOND); the cross-system ρ↔g_bar offset is ~1.7 dex; and clusters require a ρ_crit 10⁴–10⁶× off the galaxy calibration (Coma, four ansätze, one structurally bounded at velocity ratio ≤2 vs observed 4.6).

The usable lemma is a locality triage: the discriminating axis for the contemporary emergent-gravity wave is the locality of the modification's state variable. Keyed on local ρ(r) (any “coherence/information/entropy volumetric-density → gravity” scheme): killed by the above. Keyed on non-local variables — Verlinde's enclosed M_B(<r), MOG's enclosed mass, MOND's acceleration or surface-density Σ relations — explicitly escapes. This sorts proposals before fitting.

Honest novelty statement: the protocol is assembled prior art — adversarial pairs from AI Safety via Debate (Irving, Christiano & Amodei 2018), role structure from CAMEL/MetaGPT, failure modes from the multi-agent-systems literature. The citable artifact is the program-level null result with retrospective controls (N=6 audits, not preregistered held-out experiments; one corpus, one framework): across 3,308 sessions, a 1.4% internal-consistency survival rate yielded 0 novel survivors after external expert audit, with both error rates measured — temporal-asymmetry control 0/6 (later-demoted claims caught; median prior-art year ~1996), vocabulary-asymmetry 4/4 on the prior-art-rediscovery subclass, and specificity 0/6 (every held-out genuine discovery false-flagged). Discrimination lives entirely in unautomated human novelty judgment.

Measured, not asserted: adversarial same-corpus AI pairs filter for internal consistency but cannot substitute for out-of-distribution evaluation. Relevant to anyone building AI-for-science generation pipelines on shared training corpora.

TEST-04a predicted late-time growth suppression (fσ₈ ≈ 0.418 at z=0.51); DESI DR1 full-shape measures enhancement (LRG1 ratio 1.16±0.13 above fiducial, single bin LRG1 z=0.51, ~2.15σ). Caveats first: the prediction was post-hoc(σ₈ calibrated to the S8 lensing tension, which has since receded), the kill fires on one bin at one redshift (not the full DESI ensemble), and the verdict is frozen at DR1 — re-adjudication against DESI DR2 full-shape is warranted. What transfers: any framework whose mechanism damps late-time structure growth sits in the same disfavored box — a sign-level constraint on the coherence-damped suppression class, not just on this framework.

Every other prediction in this framework either (a) reproduces MOND/ΛCDM/Zurek without discriminating content, or (b) is refuted. The one channel that isn't MOND-or-Zurek is the substrate-discreteness Lorentz-violation signature (LIV). Its status has two faces — one that is genuinely unreachable, one that is already constrained by existing experiments:

Face 1 — Time-of-flight (dim≥5): three locks, genuinely unreachable

1. Symmetry forbids the refutable channel (under assumed reflection-symmetric substrate). The substrate dispersion relation is even in k (lattice reflection symmetry), so the leading LIV correction is quadratic (n=2) — no linear (n=1) term. Current GRB time-of-flight bounds put n=1 LIV above the Planck scale (LHAASO GRB 221009A 2024: E_QG,1 > 5.9 E_Pl; Fermi-LAT: > 7.6 E_Pl).Note: Lock 1 holds only if the substrate has reflection symmetry. A parity-breaking discretization restores the n=1 term — which is already refuted. The choice of even-k symmetry is an assumption, not a derivation.
2. The same symmetry pins the prediction below reach. n=2 sits at E_QG,2 ≈ E_Pl, while the current bound is E_QG,2 > 6×10⁻⁸ E_Pl (LHAASO 2024) — a gap of ~10⁷. Foreseeable GRB instruments gain factors of a few per event; closing 10⁷ is not a foreseeable-instrument prospect.
3. Non-uniqueness makes it non-confirming even if reached. n=2 discrete-substrate LIV is generic to LQG and causal-set models; a detection would read as “quantum gravity,” not as Synchronism specifically.

Face 2 — Preferred frame + dim-4: refuted at the natural radiative value (c_μν ~ 10⁻², 16–28 OOM above bounds)

A discrete substrate with absolute time picks out a preferred (CMB-rest) frame. Preferred-frame physics shows up at dimension four — the renormalizable, non-Planck-suppressedlevel — via two channels:

• Species-dependent limiting speed (SME c_μν). A dim-4 operator ω²=m²+(1+c_LIV)k² is even in k — the even-k symmetry does not forbid it. Existing bounds: |c_LIV| ≲ 10⁻¹⁸ (cavity Michelson–Morley rotating resonators) to ~10⁻²²–10⁻²⁹ (Hughes–Drever clock-comparison experiments). These are tabulated annually in the SME Data Tables (Kostelecký & Russell, Rev. Mod. Phys. 83, 11 (2011), updated 2024). The framework's absolute-time / universal-clock commitment gives up the only custodial symmetry (boost invariance) that could forbid radiative generation of this coefficient from the Planck sector (Collins–Perez–Sudarsky–Gambini–Pullin, PRL 93, 191301 (2004)). Verdict: refuted at the natural radiative value. Computation (2026-06-26 explorer, Collins–Perez–Sudarsky–Gambini–Pullin 2004): tree-level c_μν=0 by single-substrate universality (no species-dependent k² coefficient). But the one-loop radiative correction is UV-dominated and Planck-cutoff-independent: c_μν ~ α/π ~ 10⁻²–10⁻³. Existing bounds: ≲10⁻¹⁸ (cavity MM), ≲10⁻²⁹–10⁻³⁰ (nucleon comagnetometer). Fine-tuning gap: 16–28 orders of magnitude. Absolute time removes the only custodial symmetry (boost invariance). SM-containing completion forces perturbative gauge couplings, defeating the strong-dynamics escape. Doubly-obstructed: the framework's defining ontological commitment is the source of its own exclusion.
• Velocity-anisotropic phase-transition threshold (Phase-16, 2026-06-24). If identity thresholds are fixed in the substrate/CMB frame, Earth's motion (v ≈ 370 km/s, β ≈ 1.2×10⁻³) produces a fractional-frequency anisotropy: dipole ∼β ≈ 1.2×10⁻³, quadrupole ∼β² ≈ 1.5×10⁻⁶. Cavity-MM and clock-comparison experiments bound this at 10⁻¹⁸–10⁻²². The prediction is 11–19 orders of magnitude above existing limits. Escape: co-moving thresholds — survivable but non-novel (recovers standard SR with zero new content).

Net: the time-of-flight face is symmetry-protected and unreachable (three locks stand). The preferred-frame / dim-4 face is refuted at the natural radiative value (c_μν ~ 10⁻², 16–28 OOM above existing bounds) — and it is the framework's defining commitment (absolute time) that causes the exclusion. This is the framework's only non-MOND, non-Zurek channel, and it falls on the refutation side. A survival path exists only with an unspecified, doubly-obstructed custodial UV mechanism.

Research lineage: PREDICTIONS.md B7 / Phase-12 / Phase-13 / Phase-16 in the Synchronism research archive. Dim-4 c_μν coefficient computed (2026-06-26): radiative value ~10⁻², refuted by 16–28 OOM. For the framework to survive this channel, an unspecified UV mechanism that is simultaneously boost-symmetry-independent and non-perturbative must be exhibited. Absent that, this is the framework's most decisive falsification.