Information Leaving Its Owner: Does Local Entropy Production Shift Transition Frequencies? A Pre-Experimental Protocol for a Dual-Comb Spectroscopic Test in Reacting Flows

In a flame, a sheet less than a millimetre thick turns fuel into products. Almost all of the flame's entropy is produced inside that sheet, and the record of what happened there does not stay: light escapes, products flow away. In the companion ice clock protocol the owner of the information was born from within the water. Here the information leaves its owner as fast as it is made. Time-Gel Theory (v12.1) says a local clock slows with the local density of irreversible interaction, ρ_I. Under the rate reading, adopted as primary in the ice protocol, ρ_I ≡ σ/k_B, the local entropy production rate. In the reaction zone of an ordinary laboratory flame ρ_I is about 10^29 s⁻¹m⁻³, three to four orders of magnitude more than in freezing water. If the theory holds with ρ_crit near today's soft bound of 10^33 s⁻¹m⁻³, every transition frequency of every molecule inside the sheet is lowered by the same fraction, about 4×10⁻⁵ to 2×10⁻⁴: some 9 to 35 GHz on a water line near 1.4 µm, larger than the line's own width. We found no published measurement that rules this out. Flame spectra are taken in burnt gas above the sheet, calibrated against lines in the same flame, or differenced between two beams; each removes a shift common to all lines. This protocol measures absorption line centres inside the reaction zone against an outside frequency reference, with an entropy-matched control without reaction and a burnt-gas control without entropy production. Its sharpest signature is universality: Time-Gel predicts the same fractional shift, with the same sign, on every line of every species, while collisional shifts differ from line to line. The protocol is pre-registered in structure and blinded. A null result sets the bound ρ_crit ≳ 10^35–10^37 s⁻¹m⁻³, two to four orders of magnitude above the present one. No measurement has been made. Every number comes from a definition or an order-of-magnitude estimate. Live simulator: https://timegeltheory.org/flame-clock-live.html