Deriving the Timefield Θ: Mass, Gravity, and the Origin of c

This paper builds on the original work ”Birth of Mass and Gravity through Phase Coupling of the Substrate: NIT5” (doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14997856) and presents an augmented and expanded derivation of the timefield Θ as introduced in NIT. We present that the invariant speed of light, c, is not simply postulated, but emerges naturally from the independently measured electromagnetic properties of the quantum vacuum—namely its permittivity ϵ0 and permeability μ0. When coupled with matter, the dynamics of Θ give rise to mass and gravitational phenomena, thereby reproducing these aspects without the need for dark matter or singularities. This unified framework is both conceptually intuitive and experimentally testable.