The Mathematical Foundations of the Confuton Hypothesis

This paper formulates a preliminary mathematical framework for investigating the Con-futon hypothesis, which proposes a previously unidentified physical entity associated with aspecified class of physical deviations. The framework distinguishes an observed residual froma physical explanation of that residual. A reference model, a candidate contribution, and thecorresponding competing hypotheses are defined. Three elementary results establish that anonzero residual does not uniquely identify a new entity, that two models indistinguishableon the accessible observations cannot be separated by those observations, and that a candi-date contribution must be identifiable relative to the admissible reference-model parameters.These results do not establish the existence of Confuton. Rather, they specify mathematicalconditions that a physical formulation of the hypothesis must satisfy before its existence canbe assessed empirically.