Why General Relativity Predicts Both a Graviton and a Chronoton
General relativity treats space and time on equal footing in the metric tensor. The graviton arises from quantizing the transverse-traceless spatial fluctuations of the linearized metric. Applying the identical procedure to the temporal component of the metric produces a massless spin-0 quantum — the chronoton — which mediates temporal curvature and couples to energy density with the same gravitational coupling strength as the graviton. The chronoton satisfies every formal criterion invoked to motivate the graviton: massless, universally coupled, non-renormalizable, and with the same observational status — zero direct detections. We derive its propagator, vertex factors, and coupling to the Einstein Equivalence Principle. A recent derivation [5] shows that the EEP coefficient follows from the temporal structure of a Fibonacci conformal field theory, providing a microscopic candidate for the chronoton. We conclude that general relativity predicts the chronoton as necessarily as it predicts the graviton, and that the asymmetry in their respective research programs — eighty years for the graviton, zero for the chronoton — reflects a bias in physical intuition rather than a difference in theoretical status.
Authors
- Rémi Leroy
Publication Details
- Journal
- Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
- Published
- 2026-09-24
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22932104
- Primary Topic
- Cosmology and Gravitation Theories
- Type
- preprint