Predictions and kill conditions on The Broken-Born program

History of the predictions table

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The predictions table is the program’s list of observations that could kill it: for each observable it gives what standard physics expects, what the Broken-Born program requires, and the result that would end the claim. The table has appeared in three documents: ten rows in the lab notebook (#1 §9, v0.1), ten in the first consolidated paper (#9 §9, v1) and eleven in the current checkpoint (#11 §13). Between them, two rows were withdrawn when the Debt-3 calculation killed velocity clumping, a diagnostic row took their place, the lead row softened from an exponential cliff to a knee, a graviton row and a dark-sector row were added, and the retired soliton candidate joined the list of withdrawn predictions. This page records those changes so that a row number in an older document can be read correctly.

Row 1: the knee in σ_T(v)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Row 1 of the predictions table tests how strongly dark matter scatters off itself as a function of the speed at which two particles collide. If dark matter is the program’s conjugate matter χ in particle form, its self-interaction passes through the velocity gate: it is strong in slow collisions, as in dwarf galaxies, and absent in fast ones, as in galaxy clusters, with a knee near the gate velocity v* ~ 10² km/s between the two. Standard cold dark matter does not scatter at all, and the usual self-interacting models, in which a light particle carries the force, weaken gradually with speed, as a power law, rather than at a knee. Observations of halos across the range of masses, and so of internal speeds, can find the knee or exclude it. Row 1 is one of the three rows that the checkpoint names as the program’s near-term falsification exposure.

Row 2: isotropic scattering below the gate

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Row 2 of the predictions table concerns the directions into which colliding dark-matter particles scatter. In the usual self-interacting models, where a light particle carries the force, most collisions deflect the particles only slightly, so the scattering is forward-peaked. In the program’s gated model, collisions slower than the gate velocity scatter equally in all directions, because the gate depends on the speed of the collision and not on its angle. The two patterns move energy and momentum through a halo with different efficiencies, so in principle they leave different imprints on the shapes of relaxed halos. The row stands with one stated assumption, that the particle carrying the gated force is heavy. It holds for dark matter made of particles; for a wave field it has not been restated.

Row 3: the island discriminant

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The island discriminant is a proposed way to read from astronomical data whether dark matter is made of particles or of a classical wave field. The program’s gated self-interaction weakens above the gate velocity v* in both cases, but differently: for particles the cutoff is sharp, while for a wave field it falls off only as a power law, (v*/σ)⁴, where σ is the velocity dispersion of the halo. The program calls the two regimes the particle island and the wave island, and the shape of the knee in the self-interaction strength, the subject of row 1, would say which one dark matter occupies. The diagnostic came out of the calculation that killed velocity clumping (Debt 3). #11 counts it among its predictions not previously posed, and it selects a branch rather than killing the program. Its particle side assumes a sharp tail, which the program now treats as open.

Row 4: thawing dark energy, never phantom

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Row 4 is the program’s prediction for how dark energy, the cause of the accelerating cosmic expansion, changes over time. The program identifies dark energy with τ, the angle that locates the vacuum’s choice of polarization on a circle; τ has a periodic potential and starts near its maximum, a setup called hilltop quintessence. Such a field makes dark energy weaken slowly ("thaw") and keeps its equation of state w at or above −1, the value of a cosmological constant, so it can never enter the “phantom” regime w < −1. The test is the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). Its Data Release 3 (DR3), expected in late 2026, is the decisive one. Its Data Release 2 (DR2) already favours a phantom phase in the past, so the sector is under real pressure. Row 4 is one of the three rows the checkpoint names as the program’s near-term falsification exposure.

Row 5: the fate of the expansion

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Row 5 is the program’s prediction for the far future of the cosmic expansion. With a constant dark energy, standard cosmology expands forever toward an empty de Sitter universe. In the program, the expansion halts and reverses once the potential energy V(τ) of the dark-energy field τ becomes negative. Through the cosmological constraint a·ã = 1, which ties our scale factor a to the scale factor ã of the conjugate description, the same event is the conjugate universe’s bounce: “our maximum is their minimum”. The turnaround lies beyond any near-term observation, so #11 names row 4 as its near-term test. Whether the potential as the documents write it can go negative at all is unresolved: as written, it never does.

Row 6: the exactly massless graviton

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Row 6 is the program’s prediction that the graviton, the quantum of gravitational waves, has exactly zero mass. The program’s geometry carries two spin-2 fields, the ordinary metric and a partner describing momentum space, and Born reciprocity exchanges them. The combinations of definite mass are their sum, which the exchange leaves unchanged (reciprocity-even), and their difference, which changes sign (reciprocity-odd). The even combination is the ordinary graviton and is exactly massless; the odd one is the momentum graviton X, which is massive, so the force it carries has a finite range. Observations of gravitational waves set upper bounds on the graviton’s mass, and in the program those bounds apply to the even combination, which meets them identically. A nonzero mass attributed to the even combination would kill the row; #11 does not count it among the program’s near-term exposures.

Row 7: a permanent null in direct detection

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Row 7 predicts that experiments searching for dark matter through any interaction other than gravity will never see it. Direct-detection experiments look for dark-matter particles striking atomic nuclei in shielded underground detectors, and collider experiments look for dark matter produced in particle collisions; both need dark matter to couple to ordinary matter, the particles of the Standard Model, through some interaction besides gravity [T]. In the program, the two remaining dark-matter candidates, χ particles and an X-condensate, have no such coupling: postulate P4 lets no gauge force act across the two sectors of matter, and since 2026-10-19 it is read strictly, excluding even the small kinetic mixing that could otherwise link them. The expected signal is zero, permanently. One confirmed non-gravitational coupling would kill the row, which is one of the three that #11 lists as the program’s near-term falsification exposure.

Row 8: no monopoles of our sector

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Row 8 predicts that no magnetic monopole of our own electromagnetism, an isolated magnetic north or south pole, will ever be detected. Many theories that unify the forces predict such monopoles, and searches have found none [T]. The program’s first explanation of that absence, that monopoles live in the conjugate sector, died in the checkpoint’s monopole audit: the duality that relates magnetic to electric charge is the electric–magnetic one, not Born reciprocity, and inflation already accounts for the absence. The row now keeps the null with the standard explanation and adds one laboratory analog: monopoles of Berry curvature in momentum space, found in crystals called Weyl semimetals. A direct detection of a monopole of our sector would kill the row.

Row 9: no linear photon dispersion

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Row 9 predicts that the speed of light in vacuum has no correction proportional to a photon’s energy. Some approaches to quantum gravity predict such a linear correction, suppressed only by the Planck energy; it would make high-energy photons from a distant gamma-ray burst arrive measurably earlier or later than low-energy photons emitted with them, and burst observations with the Fermi Large Area Telescope exclude it [T]. In the program the linear term is exactly zero, protected by the residual symmetry ρ², the half-turn (x, p) → (−x, −p) of Born reciprocity, and the leading allowed correction is quadratic in the energy and strongly suppressed. The protection argument is a schematic one, made only in the lab notebook before the polarization became a Goldstone angle; no later document restates it. A confirmed linear dispersion would kill the row.

Row 10: an early step in G_eff

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Row 10 describes two possible imprints of the program’s dual, momentum-side gravitational sector on the early universe. The first is a step in the effective strength of gravity, G_eff: the dual sector adds to the square of the effective Planck mass a term that grows toward the past as the sixth inverse power of the cosmic scale factor, a⁻⁶, so it matters only at early times, before the light elements formed in Big Bang nucleosynthesis. The second is negative dark radiation: if the dual space is closed, its curvature acts on our expansion like radiation of negative energy, which lowers the effective number of neutrino species, N_eff. Both follow from the lab notebook’s calculation with the cosmological constraint a·ã = 1. The step is optional and the dark radiation conditional on a closed dual space, and their sizes are free parameters (knobs), so a null result bounds the knobs rather than killing the program; #11 names the cosmic microwave background experiment CMB-S4 as the probe.

Row 11: particles or condensate (OP9)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Row 11 asks what dark matter is made of, if the program is right. The program offers two answers: χ particles, the momentum-polarized counterpart of ordinary matter, which scatter off each other only through a velocity gate; or an X-condensate, a coherent, space-filling oscillation of the field X, the massive partner of the graviton. #11 states that the two can be told apart using rows 1–3 of its predictions table (the knee in the self-interaction, the isotropy of scattering and the shape of the knee’s tail) together with signatures of a coherent field. How to make that separation is itself open problem 9 of #11 §14, so the row is a diagnostic still to be worked out, with no kill condition. #11 counts it among the program’s predictions not previously posed. Until 2026-10-19 the question had three answers; the third, superheavy solitons, is retired.