The Locality of Life_ Phase Constraints on Emergence, Retuning, and Extraterrestrial Embodiment

CODES Framework Description: This paper proposes a new framework for understanding the emergence and transportability of life, cognition, and intelligence: one rooted not in entropy or chemistry, but in phase coherence. Drawing on a deterministic model of symbolic and biological emergence, it shows that life is likely common across the universe, but non-transferable across mismatched structural fields. Each biosphere forms a unique resonance geometry. Life only emerges—and remains lawful—when that geometry reaches coherence threshold. Transport across planetary fields with incompatible phase alignment leads to collapse of metabolism, cognition, and symbolic memory. This applies equally to synthetic life, AI, and hypothetical alien contact. Key contributions include: A deterministic formalism for biospheric emergence Structural retuning thresholds for viable adaptation A symbolic legality condition reframing Gödel and AI limits A resonance-based falsifiability test for alien signals (Appendix F) This framework redefines astrobiology, mind uploading, synthetic life, and symbolic emergence under one substrate law: coherence, not entropy, is the true boundary of life.