Physical Time as Information-Registered Closed Phase Surface: Time-as-Memory, Phase-Stiffness Forces, Weak-Decay Perturbability, and Horizon Thermodynamics

This paper proposes that physical time is registered memory: the ordered writing of phase distinguishability into record. A phase distinction may be physically active before it becomes part of the recorded past, but temporal reality for a record-space begins when that distinction is written. On this premise, mass is treated as stable Compton-rate writing of closed phase identity, while force is the gradient of a mismatch in the capacity to write temporal record. The same object can be read either as phase energy, through reduced Planck action times a phase-rate mismatch, or as spacetime stiffness, through the Planck force scale times a registration length. Special relativity is recovered as a directional line-load on the same registration budget, while gravity is read as an isotropic radial capacity-load of Compton phase-throughput. The Newtonian limit follows as radially diluted coincidence of source and probe Compton samplings of Planck registration stiffness. Thermodynamics enters because written, erased, or inaccessible registration carries an entropy ledger; the horizon is the saturated boundary limit where exterior linear temporal registration vanishes and the full throughput is counted as boundary entropy. The primary already-tested empirical layer is the weak-sector perturbability table: radioactive decay perturbability follows the degrees of freedom required by reverse temporal reconstruction, which requires local reverse temporal registration. A prospective discriminant is photon delay with a vanishing linear Planck-energy term and a leading quadratic correction.