New Physical Questions Enabled by a Scalar Temporal Ontology

The Scalar Temporal Field Ontology (STFO) reformulates time as a dynamical scalar field whose spacetime gradients generate causal structure, inertia, and temporal directionality. Previous work has established the internal consistency, quantum completion, effective field theory structure, matter coupling, and empirical viability of the framework. In this paper, we shift focus from construction and validation to exploration. We identify a set of genuinely new physical questions that become well-posed only once time is promoted to a field. These questions span quantum foundations, gravitational physics, information theory, cosmology, laboratory-scale experiments, and artificial systems. The purpose of this work is not to resolve these questions, but to define the research frontier opened by a scalar temporal ontology.