Common introduction to all the records of this series. The content of this record follows below. Mathematical Materiality (MM) in brief. Why are the laws of physics the same everywhere and at every instant, even though nothing forces matter to obey them? MM proposes an answer: the laws are not rules imposed on matter from the outside; rather, matter itself is made of mathematical relations. And mathematics cannot change: a relation binds two distinct terms everywhere and always. In logic, nothing exists on its own: to exist means to be in relation to another logical entity, and outside this web of relations nothing can exist, not even other universes. This reading already meets experimental measurements at two points. First, the ratio of dark to ordinary matter is read as 3√3 = 5.196; when left free in the fits, Planck and DESI DR2 data give 5.21–5.22 (as registered in record 2.44, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23329080). Second, the acceleration scale of galaxies is read as a₀ = cH₀/6, the same scale that appears in Verlinde's emergent gravity: the computed value is 1.09–1.18 × 10⁻¹⁰ m/s² against the measured value of 1.20 (record 2.46.1, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23506655). Both readings were formulated with the measurements already known; the tests to check them against future data are registered in the same records. In the first logical nexus between space and time — which became homogeneous with Einstein — there is a non-local phase, made only of a pure logical distinction: space is not time. Between the two there is no relation of quantitative calculation, only the logical entity they have in common, which is needed to make them exist with respect to each other. This level is not distant: it is present in every phase of reality, in every place and at every instant. It shows in entanglement, where two distant systems remain correlated more strongly than any explanation based on separate properties and free of faster-than-light influences allows, without anything physically travelling between them. In this non-local phase the two distinct terms, space and time, share only one logical element, which we shall call their greatest common divisor (GCD), just as the numbers 3 and 5 have only 1 in common. The local world arises when a relation is counted through this GCD: its multiples and its fractions form a matrix. Seen by an observer inside the system like us, the multiples appear as time and the fractions as space. When that same multiple is directly contained in the matrix of the point of observation, it turns into mass — that is, into concrete matter as we usually understand it. There is therefore a close link between time and mass, in full agreement with Einstein's relativity, which ties mass to spacetime. The observed objects, while being logically autonomous entities in their local relations, enter into relation with the observer through a logical diffraction — that is, a decomposition into fractions — of the observer's matrix. This reading also gives a reason for the limit of the speed of light, which in Einstein's relativity is instead taken as a starting principle. The speed of light is the fixed exchange rate between the multiples and the fractions of the same GCD, meaning how much space a single step of time is worth: exceeding it would mean, for some observer, covering space without counting time, and thus leaving the local world. Logic always starts from a logical relative, and this exchange rate has nothing absolute in itself either: it is a necessary relative which, inside the system, becomes an absolute hypothesis, the same for everyone and impossible to exceed. Outside the system, by contrast, it has no justification at all, because outside there is only non-existence: justifying something requires another term to relate it to, and out there there is none. Asking for a reason from outside is like asking what lies north of the North Pole. The same theoretical framework that reads space, time, mass and the observed objects also admits quantum mechanics. The non-local phase and the mirror-like logical reciprocity between the two ends of the nexus give a reason for the probabilistic behaviour of matter. When the observed object is large enough, its mass fixes it in the matrix of the point of observation: for this reason we see it in one precise place and at one precise instant. When instead the object falls below a certain mass threshold, the principal GCD (that of the point of observation) and the GCD of the diffraction that generates the object are forced to become equal, reflecting each other as in a mirror. At that point the object no longer occupies a single point of the spacetime generated by the observer, but spreads over several possible positions, and we observe it as probability. It is like having to describe the number 10 using only the number 1: the only way is to distribute the 1 over ten positions, one for each unit of the 10. Today we know that even objects made of thousands of atoms behave in this way, and no experiment has yet found the boundary. The idea that the passage from quantum to classical behaviour depends on mass is close to that of Penrose and Diósi; in MM the threshold is the point where the two GCDs, the principal one and that of the local diffraction, become equal. For all these reasons the universe behaves like a simulation without really being one. It follows exact rules, made of counts, everywhere and at every instant, but no machine runs them and no programmer wrote them: a structure of mathematical relations does not need to be computed in order to exist. Tegmark (2008) had already noted that such a simulation need not be run, while Vazza (2025) estimated that running it physically on a machine would require resources that the very laws of the universe do not allow. This record develops one aspect of the theoretical framework. The work is shared openly so that it can be judged by as many readers as possible: anyone who knows someone interested can pass on this single link, valid for the whole framework (with an overview in English and Italian): https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23535916. The entry page, with the complete list of all records, is https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22667516. To cite the framework: Lanciano, U. (2026). The number 1 in front of the mirror: Mathematical Materiality from the nexus to the cosmos. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23535916. The records have been deposited since 5 August 2026, each with its own date, and are released under CC BY 4.0: anyone may use them by citing the source. Objections and errors found are welcome at riverantares@gmail.com, since Zenodo has no space for comments. This record. When two observers correctly read the same quantity and compare their records, they find them in agreement, within the measurement errors. This deposit proposes to read the object both of them see as the common part of their records: what each reads from its own record, without looking at the other's, with the same value as the other (the Gács–Körner common part, with a very small tolerance when the copies are imperfect). The key word is projection: each record is very rich and mostly private; the reading projects it onto a simpler question, like a shadow, and two records that differ as wholes coincide in their projections. In the author's framework the observed object is a transposition and non-local projection of the observer's "observation matrix" (its record), and what two projections share is the trace of one non-local relation, non-local in the sense of not located in space and time, not of an influence at a distance. How it was tested. Eight formulations, nine test cases and seven criteria were registered before any calculation and tested on a small model of the kind used in quantum Darwinism (a two-valued source, N scattered carriers, two observers; classical and quantum versions). Excluded: "the common part is shared matter" (two people see the same chair with different photons: agreement 1 − 8.6 × 10⁻⁷ with 63 carriers each and no carrier in common); "the common part is having the same statistics" (two independent coins have it too); the exact common part, which is zero as soon as the copies are imperfect. Surviving: the common part with a tolerance δ (provisionally, within the class of readings tested), and a graded measure of how correlated the readings are (their mutual information). In the model it behaves as a yes-or-no: with copies that are wrong 10 % of the time it is zero up to 22 copies per observer and essentially the whole object (≥ 0.9999998 bit) from 23 copies on (δ = 10⁻⁶; 11 and 37 copies for δ = 10⁻³ and 10⁻⁹). At 23 copies the record carries 99.9998 % of the information about the object, and the common part (about 1 bit) is only 8.5 % of the whole record (about 11.8 bits). The number of copies needed depends on their quality, not on how many there are, as in the estimate for many copies of Zwolak, Riedel and Zurek (2014). In the cases examined, no statistical prediction differs from that of quantum mechanics. Prior work, first. Quantum Darwinism and "relatively objective existence" (Zurek 2003–2022; Ollivier, Poulin and Zurek 2004; Riedel and Zurek 2010); spectrum broadcast structures (Korbicz, Horodecki and Horodecki 2014; Horodecki, Korbicz and Horodecki 2015; Le and Olaya-Castro 2019); relational quantum mechanics and cross-perspective links (Rovelli 1996; Di Biagio and Rovelli 2021; Adlam and Rovelli 2022); Wigner's-friend theorems and experiments (Frauchiger and Renner 2018; Brukner 2018; Proietti et al. 2019; Bong et al. 2020; Rivlin, Engineer and Baumann 2025); agreement theorems (Aumann 1976; Contreras-Tejada et al. 2021; Leifer and Duarte 2026, who suggest as a speculation that a shared objective reality emerges from common knowledge; Cepollaro and Di Biagio 2026). As far as we found, no study defines the observed object itself as the common part of two observers' records; t
Common introduction to all the records of this series. The content of this record follows below. Mathematical Materiality (MM) in brief. Why are the laws of physics the same everywhere and at every instant, even though nothing forces matter to obey them? MM proposes an answer: the laws are not rules imposed on matter from the outside; rather, matter itself is made of mathematical relations. And mathematics cannot change: a relation binds two distinct terms everywhere and always. In logic, nothing exists on its own: to exist means to be in relation to another logical entity, and outside this web of relations nothing can exist, not even other universes. This reading already meets experimental measurements at two points. First, the ratio of dark to ordinary matter is read as 3√3 = 5.196; when left free in the fits, Planck and DESI DR2 data give 5.21–5.22 (as registered in record 2.44, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23329080). Second, the acceleration scale of galaxies is read as a₀ = cH₀/6, the same scale that appears in Verlinde's emergent gravity: the computed value is 1.09–1.18 × 10⁻¹⁰ m/s² against the measured value of 1.20 (record 2.46.1, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23506655). Both readings were formulated with the measurements already known; the tests to check them against future data are registered in the same records. In the first logical nexus between space and time — which became homogeneous with Einstein — there is a non-local phase, made only of a pure logical distinction: space is not time. Between the two there is no relation of quantitative calculation, only the logical entity they have in common, which is needed to make them exist with respect to each other. This level is not distant: it is present in every phase of reality, in every place and at every instant. It shows in entanglement, where two distant systems remain correlated more strongly than any explanation based on separate properties and free of faster-than-light influences allows, without anything physically travelling between them. In this non-local phase the two distinct terms, space and time, share only one logical element, which we shall call their greatest common divisor (GCD), just as the numbers 3 and 5 have only 1 in common. The local world arises when a relation is counted through this GCD: its multiples and its fractions form a matrix. Seen by an observer inside the system like us, the multiples appear as time and the fractions as space. When that same multiple is directly contained in the matrix of the point of observation, it turns into mass — that is, into concrete matter as we usually understand it. There is therefore a close link between time and mass, in full agreement with Einstein's relativity, which ties mass to spacetime. The observed objects, while being logically autonomous entities in their local relations, enter into relation with the observer through a logical diffraction — that is, a decomposition into fractions — of the observer's matrix. This reading also gives a reason for the limit of the speed of light, which in Einstein's relativity is instead taken as a starting principle. The speed of light is the fixed exchange rate between the multiples and the fractions of the same GCD, meaning how much space a single step of time is worth: exceeding it would mean, for some observer, covering space without counting time, and thus leaving the local world. Logic always starts from a logical relative, and this exchange rate has nothing absolute in itself either: it is a necessary relative which, inside the system, becomes an absolute hypothesis, the same for everyone and impossible to exceed. Outside the system, by contrast, it has no justification at all, because outside there is only non-existence: justifying something requires another term to relate it to, and out there there is none. Asking for a reason from outside is like asking what lies north of the North Pole. The same theoretical framework that reads space, time, mass and the observed objects also admits quantum mechanics. The non-local phase and the mirror-like logical reciprocity between the two ends of the nexus give a reason for the probabilistic behaviour of matter. When the observed object is large enough, its mass fixes it in the matrix of the point of observation: for this reason we see it in one precise place and at one precise instant. When instead the object falls below a certain mass threshold, the principal GCD (that of the point of observation) and the GCD of the diffraction that generates the object are forced to become equal, reflecting each other as in a mirror. At that point the object no longer occupies a single point of the spacetime generated by the observer, but spreads over several possible positions, and we observe it as probability. It is like having to describe the number 10 using only the number 1: the only way is to distribute the 1 over ten positions, one for each unit of the 10. Today we know that even objects made of thousands of atoms behave in this way, and no experiment has yet found the boundary. The idea that the passage from quantum to classical behaviour depends on mass is close to that of Penrose and Diósi; in MM the threshold is the point where the two GCDs, the principal one and that of the local diffraction, become equal. For all these reasons the universe behaves like a simulation without really being one. It follows exact rules, made of counts, everywhere and at every instant, but no machine runs them and no programmer wrote them: a structure of mathematical relations does not need to be computed in order to exist. Tegmark (2008) had already noted that such a simulation need not be run, while Vazza (2025) estimated that running it physically on a machine would require resources that the very laws of the universe do not allow. This record develops one aspect of the theoretical framework. The work is shared openly so that it can be judged by as many readers as possible: anyone who knows someone interested can pass on this single link, valid for the whole framework (with an overview in English and Italian): https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23535916. The entry page, with the complete list of all records, is https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22667516. To cite the framework: Lanciano, U. (2026). The number 1 in front of the mirror: Mathematical Materiality from the nexus to the cosmos. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23535916. The records have been deposited since 5 August 2026, each with its own date, and are released under CC BY 4.0: anyone may use them by citing the source. Objections and errors found are welcome at riverantares@gmail.com, since Zenodo has no space for comments. This record. When two observers correctly read the same quantity and compare their records, they find them in agreement, within the measurement errors. This deposit proposes to read the object both of them see as the common part of their records: what each reads from its own record, without looking at the other's, with the same value as the other (the Gács–Körner common part, with a very small tolerance when the copies are imperfect). The key word is projection: each record is very rich and mostly private; the reading projects it onto a simpler question, like a shadow, and two records that differ as wholes coincide in their projections. In the author's framework the observed object is a transposition and non-local projection of the observer's "observation matrix" (its record), and what two projections share is the trace of one non-local relation, non-local in the sense of not located in space and time, not of an influence at a distance. How it was tested. Eight formulations, nine test cases and seven criteria were registered before any calculation and tested on a small model of the kind used in quantum Darwinism (a two-valued source, N scattered carriers, two observers; classical and quantum versions). Excluded: "the common part is shared matter" (two people see the same chair with different photons: agreement 1 − 8.6 × 10⁻⁷ with 63 carriers each and no carrier in common); "the common part is having the same statistics" (two independent coins have it too); the exact common part, which is zero as soon as the copies are imperfect. Surviving: the common part with a tolerance δ (provisionally, within the class of readings tested), and a graded measure of how correlated the readings are (their mutual information). In the model it behaves as a yes-or-no: with copies that are wrong 10 % of the time it is zero up to 22 copies per observer and essentially the whole object (≥ 0.9999998 bit) from 23 copies on (δ = 10⁻⁶; 11 and 37 copies for δ = 10⁻³ and 10⁻⁹). At 23 copies the record carries 99.9998 % of the information about the object, and the common part (about 1 bit) is only 8.5 % of the whole record (about 11.8 bits). The number of copies needed depends on their quality, not on how many there are, as in the estimate for many copies of Zwolak, Riedel and Zurek (2014). In the cases examined, no statistical prediction differs from that of quantum mechanics. Prior work, first. Quantum Darwinism and "relatively objective existence" (Zurek 2003–2022; Ollivier, Poulin and Zurek 2004; Riedel and Zurek 2010); spectrum broadcast structures (Korbicz, Horodecki and Horodecki 2014; Horodecki, Korbicz and Horodecki 2015; Le and Olaya-Castro 2019); relational quantum mechanics and cross-perspective links (Rovelli 1996; Di Biagio and Rovelli 2021; Adlam and Rovelli 2022); Wigner's-friend theorems and experiments (Frauchiger and Renner 2018; Brukner 2018; Proietti et al. 2019; Bong et al. 2020; Rivlin, Engineer and Baumann 2025); agreement theorems (Aumann 1976; Contreras-Tejada et al. 2021; Leifer and Duarte 2026, who suggest as a speculation that a shared objective reality emerges from common knowledge; Cepollaro and Di Biagio 2026). As far as we found, no study defines the observed object itself as the common part of two observers' records; t
Common introduction to all the records of this series. The content of this record follows below. Mathematical Materiality (MM) in brief. Why are the laws of physics the same everywhere and at every instant, even though nothing forces matter to obey them? MM proposes an answer: the laws are not rules imposed on matter from the outside; rather, matter itself is made of mathematical relations. And mathematics cannot change: a relation binds two distinct terms everywhere and always. In logic, nothing exists on its own: to exist means to be in relation to another logical entity, and outside this web of relations nothing can exist, not even other universes. This reading already meets experimental measurements at two points. First, the ratio of dark to ordinary matter is read as 3√3 = 5.196; when left free in the fits, Planck and DESI DR2 data give 5.21–5.22 (as registered in record 2.44, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23329080). Second, the acceleration scale of galaxies is read as a₀ = cH₀/6, the same scale that appears in Verlinde's emergent gravity: the computed value is 1.09–1.18 × 10⁻¹⁰ m/s² against the measured value of 1.20 (record 2.46.1, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23506655). Both readings were formulated with the measurements already known; the tests to check them against future data are registered in the same records. In the first logical nexus between space and time — which became homogeneous with Einstein — there is a non-local phase, made only of a pure logical distinction: space is not time. Between the two there is no relation of quantitative calculation, only the logical entity they have in common, which is needed to make them exist with respect to each other. This level is not distant: it is present in every phase of reality, in every place and at every instant. It shows in entanglement, where two distant systems remain correlated more strongly than any explanation based on separate properties and free of faster-than-light influences allows, without anything physically travelling between them. In this non-local phase the two distinct terms, space and time, share only one logical element, which we shall call their greatest common divisor (GCD), just as the numbers 3 and 5 have only 1 in common. The local world arises when a relation is counted through this GCD: its multiples and its fractions form a matrix. Seen by an observer inside the system like us, the multiples appear as time and the fractions as space. When that same multiple is directly contained in the matrix of the point of observation, it turns into mass — that is, into concrete matter as we usually understand it. There is therefore a close link between time and mass, in full agreement with Einstein's relativity, which ties mass to spacetime. The observed objects, while being logically autonomous entities in their local relations, enter into relation with the observer through a logical diffraction — that is, a decomposition into fractions — of the observer's matrix. This reading also gives a reason for the limit of the speed of light, which in Einstein's relativity is instead taken as a starting principle. The speed of light is the fixed exchange rate between the multiples and the fractions of the same GCD, meaning how much space a single step of time is worth: exceeding it would mean, for some observer, covering space without counting time, and thus leaving the local world. Logic always starts from a logical relative, and this exchange rate has nothing absolute in itself either: it is a necessary relative which, inside the system, becomes an absolute hypothesis, the same for everyone and impossible to exceed. Outside the system, by contrast, it has no justification at all, because outside there is only non-existence: justifying something requires another term to relate it to, and out there there is none. Asking for a reason from outside is like asking what lies north of the North Pole. The same theoretical framework that reads space, time, mass and the observed objects also admits quantum mechanics. The non-local phase and the mirror-like logical reciprocity between the two ends of the nexus give a reason for the probabilistic behaviour of matter. When the observed object is large enough, its mass fixes it in the matrix of the point of observation: for this reason we see it in one precise place and at one precise instant. When instead the object falls below a certain mass threshold, the principal GCD (that of the point of observation) and the GCD of the diffraction that generates the object are forced to become equal, reflecting each other as in a mirror. At that point the object no longer occupies a single point of the spacetime generated by the observer, but spreads over several possible positions, and we observe it as probability. It is like having to describe the number 10 using only the number 1: the only way is to distribute the 1 over ten positions, one for each unit of the 10. Today we know that even objects made of thousands of atoms behave in this way, and no experiment has yet found the boundary. The idea that the passage from quantum to classical behaviour depends on mass is close to that of Penrose and Diósi; in MM the threshold is the point where the two GCDs, the principal one and that of the local diffraction, become equal. For all these reasons the universe behaves like a simulation without really being one. It follows exact rules, made of counts, everywhere and at every instant, but no machine runs them and no programmer wrote them: a structure of mathematical relations does not need to be computed in order to exist. Tegmark (2008) had already noted that such a simulation need not be run, while Vazza (2025) estimated that running it physically on a machine would require resources that the very laws of the universe do not allow. The work is shared openly so that it can be judged by as many readers as possible: anyone who knows someone interested can pass on this single link, valid for the whole framework (with an overview in English and Italian): https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23535916. The entry page, with the complete list of all records, is https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22667516. To cite the framework: Lanciano, U. (2026). The number 1 in front of the mirror: Mathematical Materiality from the nexus to the cosmos. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23535916. The records have been deposited since 5 August 2026, each with its own date, and are released under CC BY 4.0: anyone may use them by citing the source. Objections and errors found are welcome at riverantares@gmail.com, since Zenodo has no space for comments. This record contains the four-page summary of the framework, in English and in Italian: the question of why physical laws hold everywhere with nothing to enforce them; the Great Reversal; the non-local phase and its empirical trace in Bell-type experiments; the five postulates with the example of 3 and 5; the matrix; the equals sign as a mirror; a clock made of 3 and 5, whose two means give Einstein's slowing of moving clocks (a known identity: Bondi 1964; Knuth and Bahreyni 2014); and the comparison with two measured numbers. The full overview, with the list of all records, is at DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22667516. The author is not a professional physicist; the framework and its premises are the author's own. The texts were written with the help of AI assistants. There has been no review by human referees.
Common introduction to all the records of this series. The content of this record follows below. Mathematical Materiality (MM) in brief. Why are the laws of physics the same everywhere and at every instant, even though nothing forces matter to obey them? MM proposes an answer: the laws are not rules imposed on matter from the outside; rather, matter itself is made of mathematical relations. And mathematics cannot change: a relation binds two distinct terms everywhere and always. In logic, nothing exists on its own: to exist means to be in relation to another logical entity, and outside this web of relations nothing can exist, not even other universes. This reading already meets experimental measurements at two points. First, the ratio of dark to ordinary matter is read as 3√3 = 5.196; when left free in the fits, Planck and DESI DR2 data give 5.21–5.22 (as registered in record 2.44, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23329080). Second, the acceleration scale of galaxies is read as a₀ = cH₀/6, the same scale that appears in Verlinde's emergent gravity: the computed value is 1.09–1.18 × 10⁻¹⁰ m/s² against the measured value of 1.20 (record 2.46.1, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23506655). Both readings were formulated with the measurements already known; the tests to check them against future data are registered in the same records. In the first logical nexus between space and time — which became homogeneous with Einstein — there is a non-local phase, made only of a pure logical distinction: space is not time. Between the two there is no relation of quantitative calculation, only the logical entity they have in common, which is needed to make them exist with respect to each other. This level is not distant: it is present in every phase of reality, in every place and at every instant. It shows in entanglement, where two distant systems remain correlated more strongly than any explanation based on separate properties and free of faster-than-light influences allows, without anything physically travelling between them. In this non-local phase the two distinct terms, space and time, share only one logical element, which we shall call their greatest common divisor (GCD), just as the numbers 3 and 5 have only 1 in common. The local world arises when a relation is counted through this GCD: its multiples and its fractions form a matrix. Seen by an observer inside the system like us, the multiples appear as time and the fractions as space. When that same multiple is directly contained in the matrix of the point of observation, it turns into mass — that is, into concrete matter as we usually understand it. There is therefore a close link between time and mass, in full agreement with Einstein's relativity, which ties mass to spacetime. The observed objects, while being logically autonomous entities in their local relations, enter into relation with the observer through a logical diffraction — that is, a decomposition into fractions — of the observer's matrix. This reading also gives a reason for the limit of the speed of light, which in Einstein's relativity is instead taken as a starting principle. The speed of light is the fixed exchange rate between the multiples and the fractions of the same GCD, meaning how much space a single step of time is worth: exceeding it would mean, for some observer, covering space without counting time, and thus leaving the local world. Logic always starts from a logical relative, and this exchange rate has nothing absolute in itself either: it is a necessary relative which, inside the system, becomes an absolute hypothesis, the same for everyone and impossible to exceed. Outside the system, by contrast, it has no justification at all, because outside there is only non-existence: justifying something requires another term to relate it to, and out there there is none. Asking for a reason from outside is like asking what lies north of the North Pole. The same theoretical framework that reads space, time, mass and the observed objects also admits quantum mechanics. The non-local phase and the mirror-like logical reciprocity between the two ends of the nexus give a reason for the probabilistic behaviour of matter. When the observed object is large enough, its mass fixes it in the matrix of the point of observation: for this reason we see it in one precise place and at one precise instant. When instead the object falls below a certain mass threshold, the principal GCD (that of the point of observation) and the GCD of the diffraction that generates the object are forced to become equal, reflecting each other as in a mirror. At that point the object no longer occupies a single point of the spacetime generated by the observer, but spreads over several possible positions, and we observe it as probability. It is like having to describe the number 10 using only the number 1: the only way is to distribute the 1 over ten positions, one for each unit of the 10. Today we know that even objects made of thousands of atoms behave in this way, and no experiment has yet found the boundary. The idea that the passage from quantum to classical behaviour depends on mass is close to that of Penrose and Diósi; in MM the threshold is the point where the two GCDs, the principal one and that of the local diffraction, become equal. For all these reasons the universe behaves like a simulation without really being one. It follows exact rules, made of counts, everywhere and at every instant, but no machine runs them and no programmer wrote them: a structure of mathematical relations does not need to be computed in order to exist. Tegmark (2008) had already noted that such a simulation need not be run, while Vazza (2025) estimated that running it physically on a machine would require resources that the very laws of the universe do not allow. This record develops one aspect of the theoretical framework. The work is shared openly so that it can be judged by as many readers as possible: anyone who knows someone interested can pass on this single link, valid for the whole framework (with an overview in English and Italian): https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23535916. The entry page, with the complete list of all records, is https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22667516. To cite the framework: Lanciano, U. (2026). The number 1 in front of the mirror: Mathematical Materiality from the nexus to the cosmos. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23535916. The records have been deposited since 5 August 2026, each with its own date, and are released under CC BY 4.0: anyone may use them by citing the source. Objections and errors found are welcome at riverantares@gmail.com, since Zenodo has no space for comments. Bell experiments without loopholes give CHSH values above the local bound 2, and high-precision measurements are compatible with Tsirelson's quantum bound 2√2 (Poh et al. 2015: 2.82759 ± 0.00051). This record asks what the author's framework, Mathematical Materiality (MM), must contain to respect both facts, and where it then stands among interpretations of quantum mechanics. No mathematical priority is claimed: the theorems used are published (Tsirelson; Barnum et al. 2010; Sorkin's quantum measures; Craig, Dowker et al. 2007; Aharonov's two-time formalism; Cramer; Argaman 2010; Wharton and Argaman 2020), and the record separates published results, derivations in the working notes and numerical conjectures. Predictions were registered with SHA-256 fingerprints before each test; failed predictions are reported. (1) Local readings and the Tsirelson bound. If each wing is read with the Born geometry (Euclidean state space with all its effects), no no-signalling joint event exceeds 2√2. Replacing the Euclidean ball with ℓ^p balls raises the maximum: 2^(2−1/p) for p ≥ 2 (the value of Ver Steeg and Wehner 2009), above 2√2 also for 1 < p < 2 (exact value conjectural). With marginals of length m the maximum is the quantum 2√(2 − m²). Two registered predictions failed: a hand formula, wrong for p < 2, and a three-dimensional search that stayed below the value already reached by the two-dimensional construction. (2) Two slits on the Feynman checkerboard (MM 2.40). In the 2.40 representation the imaginary turn weight −i sin θ produces destructive interference (dark fringes); with positive weights the two-slit pattern never falls below the sum of the single slits. The fringes fall at −143.2 and +140.4 lattice sites against ±142.1 predicted from the lattice dispersion. For the preparations tested, a real coin gives the same probabilities. A first registered run failed because its "central region" was badly defined; the second run was registered after seeing the first. (3) Can a future boundary give Born frequencies? In a minimal model, a future that selects the outcome reproduces Born frequencies only with some rules (weighting each future by the closure of its loop, or an exponential race), not with others. The measure over futures remains a postulate. (4) A locally mediated retrocausal singlet model. The future reading of one wing fixes a parameter carried back to the source and forward to the other wing, which reads it with the local Born rule. Singlet correlations are reproduced with every link along paths inside light cones. Within this family, no observable signalling holds only for the balanced (Born) weight, as already discussed by Argaman (2010); the angular law is assumed. (5) Self-consistency and the balanced weight. In the pair model the Born weight is put in by hand. With any other weight a bit could be signalled through the loop and, composed with a second link (Tolman's antitelephone, assumed), into the sender's past; a paradox protocol then makes consistent histories as improbable as one likes (0.02 with p = 0.51 and 10 001 pairs), while with the Born weight the channel carries nothing. This does not make non-Born weights impossible: the step from "arbitrarily improbable" to "cannot exist" is stated as the author's postulate. (
This record. Whether a mass exists above which quantum superposition stops: registered readings confronted with the 2026 interference record, and a prediction dated to 2035. Reading path: Quantum mechanics, 2 of 2 · before: Born geometry, the Tsirelson bound and the singlet · all themes. Common introduction to all the records of this series. The content of this record follows below. Mathematical Materiality (MM) in brief. Why are the laws of physics the same everywhere and at every instant, even though nothing forces matter to obey them? MM proposes an answer: the laws are not rules imposed on matter from the outside; rather, matter itself is made of mathematical relations. And mathematics cannot change: a relation binds two distinct terms everywhere and always. In logic, nothing exists on its own: to exist means to be in relation to another logical entity, and outside this web of relations nothing can exist, not even other universes. This reading already meets experimental measurements at two points. First, the ratio of dark to ordinary matter is read as 3√3 = 5.196; when left free in the fits, Planck and DESI DR2 data give 5.21–5.22 (as registered in record 2.44, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23329080). Second, the acceleration scale of galaxies is read as a₀ = cH₀/6, the same scale that appears in Verlinde's emergent gravity: the computed value is 1.09–1.18 × 10⁻¹⁰ m/s² against the measured value of 1.20 (record 2.46.1, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23506655). Both readings were formulated with the measurements already known; the tests to check them against future data are registered in the same records. In the first logical nexus between space and time — which became homogeneous with Einstein — there is a non-local phase, made only of a pure logical distinction: space is not time. Between the two there is no relation of quantitative calculation, only the logical entity they have in common, which is needed to make them exist with respect to each other. This level is not distant: it is present in every phase of reality, in every place and at every instant. It shows in entanglement, where two distant systems remain correlated more strongly than any explanation based on separate properties and free of faster-than-light influences allows, without anything physically travelling between them. In this non-local phase the two distinct terms, space and time, share only one logical element, which we shall call their greatest common divisor (GCD), just as the numbers 3 and 5 have only 1 in common. The local world arises when a relation is counted through this GCD: its multiples and its fractions form a matrix. Seen by an observer inside the system like us, the multiples appear as time and the fractions as space. When that same multiple is directly contained in the matrix of the point of observation, it turns into mass — that is, into concrete matter as we usually understand it. There is therefore a close link between time and mass, in full agreement with Einstein's relativity, which ties mass to spacetime. The observed objects, while being logically autonomous entities in their local relations, enter into relation with the observer through a logical diffraction — that is, a decomposition into fractions — of the observer's matrix. This reading also gives a reason for the limit of the speed of light, which in Einstein's relativity is instead taken as a starting principle. The speed of light is the fixed exchange rate between the multiples and the fractions of the same GCD, meaning how much space a single step of time is worth: exceeding it would mean, for some observer, covering space without counting time, and thus leaving the local world. Logic always starts from a logical relative, and this exchange rate has nothing absolute in itself either: it is a necessary relative which, inside the system, becomes an absolute hypothesis, the same for everyone and impossible to exceed. Outside the system, by contrast, it has no justification at all, because outside there is only non-existence: justifying something requires another term to relate it to, and out there there is none. Asking for a reason from outside is like asking what lies north of the North Pole. The same theoretical framework that reads space, time, mass and the observed objects also admits quantum mechanics. The non-local phase and the mirror-like logical reciprocity between the two ends of the nexus give a reason for the probabilistic behaviour of matter. When the observed object is large enough, its mass fixes it in the matrix of the point of observation: for this reason we see it in one precise place and at one precise instant. When instead the object falls below a certain mass threshold, the principal GCD (that of the point of observation) and the GCD of the diffraction that generates the object are forced to become equal, reflecting each other as in a mirror. At that point the object no longer occupies a single point of the spacetime generated by the observer, but spreads over several possible positions, and we observe it as probability. It is like having to describe the number 10 using only the number 1: the only way is to distribute the 1 over ten positions, one for each unit of the 10. Today we know that even objects made of thousands of atoms behave in this way, and no experiment has yet found the boundary. The idea that the passage from quantum to classical behaviour depends on mass is close to that of Penrose and Diósi; in MM the threshold is the point where the two GCDs, the principal one and that of the local diffraction, become equal. For all these reasons the universe behaves like a simulation without really being one. It follows exact rules, made of counts, everywhere and at every instant, but no machine runs them and no programmer wrote them: a structure of mathematical relations does not need to be computed in order to exist. Tegmark (2008) had already noted that such a simulation need not be run, while Vazza (2025) estimated that running it physically on a machine would require resources that the very laws of the universe do not allow. This record develops one aspect of the theoretical framework. The work is shared openly so that it can be judged by as many readers as possible: anyone who knows someone interested can pass on this single link, valid for the whole framework (with an overview in English and Italian): https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23535916. The entry page, with the complete list of all records, is https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22667516. To cite the framework: Lanciano, U. (2026). The number 1 in front of the mirror: Mathematical Materiality from the nexus to the cosmos. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23535916. The records have been deposited since 5 August 2026, each with its own date, and are released under CC BY 4.0: anyone may use them by citing the source. Objections and errors found are welcome at riverantares@gmail.com, since Zenodo has no space for comments. This record. Standard quantum mechanics has no mass at which a superposition stops: large objects look classical because of decoherence, the environment that keeps recording where they are. Collapse models (Ghirardi–Rimini–Weber, CSL, Diósi–Penrose) add such a limit by hand. The framework says that a threshold exists: below a certain mass level the principal GCD of the point of observation and the GCD of the diffraction that generates the object become equal, and the object spreads over several positions (see the box above). The box gives no number. This deposit tries to give the threshold a number, or to say clearly why it cannot. A second part tests two later remarks of the author: the limit cannot be fixed as a mass, because a calculation of the «fractional distance» is missing; and large distant bodies stay fixed because their size makes up for the distance. It was announced in deposit 2.64 (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23610071). The main result: for distance, the limit is not a mass alone. In the two readings of the fractional distance that hold, it is a ratio between the size that has to be told apart and the cell of the copies that do the telling, together with the number of copies; the readings of part one with a mass threshold at the Planck scale remain possible, untested, and that the two readings are one rule of the framework is a proposal. For the state of an object the copies are the photons and molecules the environment carries away, and one copy cannot tell apart two positions closer than about half a wavelength: a 16-microgram crystal stays quantum over 2 × 10⁻¹⁸ m because about 10³⁴ thermal copies would be needed to fix it. For the way a distant observer reads an object, the cell is the diffraction cell of the observer's aperture at the object's distance: two stars of almost the same mass fall on opposite sides (the disc of Sirius B, 1.02 solar masses at 2.64 pc, inferred from its radius, is 20–60 times smaller than the finest cell of today's interferometers; τ Ceti, 0.78 at 3.65 pc, and 61 Cyg A, 0.67–0.74 at 3.49 pc, are resolved): with this instrumental classification the sample does not support a mass-only limit growing with distance. Both rules coincide with known physics (decoherence and wave optics): the framework admits them; experiments put them to the test but cannot tell them apart from standard physics. Prior work, first. Decoherence: Joos and Zeh (1985), Zurek (2003), Schlosshauer (2019); measured against separation and number of photons: Chapman et al. (1995), Kokorowski et al. (2001), Hornberger et al. (2003), Hackermüller et al. (2004). Collapse models: Károlyházy (1966), Ghirardi, Rimini and Weber (1986), Diósi (1987, 1989), Pearle (1989), Ghirardi, Pearle and Rimini (1990), Penrose (1996), the review of Bassi et al. (2013), Howl, Penrose and Fuentes (2019). Tests and limits: Nimmrichter and Hornberger (2013), Romero-Isart (2011), Donadi et al. (2021), the Majorana Demonstrator (2022), Carlesso et al. (2022), Gasbarri et
This record. Twelve phenomena, entanglement among them, read through the same non-local phase: «non-local» as not located in space and time, not as action at a distance. Reading path: Foundations: why the laws hold, 5 of 5 · before: Is mass a contained rhythm? · all themes. Common introduction to all the records of this series. The content of this record follows below. Mathematical Materiality (MM) in brief. Why are the laws of physics the same everywhere and at every instant, even though nothing forces matter to obey them? MM proposes an answer: the laws are not rules imposed on matter from the outside; rather, matter itself is made of mathematical relations. And mathematics cannot change: a relation binds two distinct terms everywhere and always. In logic, nothing exists on its own: to exist means to be in relation to another logical entity, and outside this web of relations nothing can exist, not even other universes. This reading already meets experimental measurements at two points. First, the ratio of dark to ordinary matter is read as 3√3 = 5.196; when left free in the fits, Planck and DESI DR2 data give 5.21–5.22 (as registered in record 2.44, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23329080). Second, the acceleration scale of galaxies is read as a₀ = cH₀/6, the same scale that appears in Verlinde's emergent gravity: the computed value is 1.09–1.18 × 10⁻¹⁰ m/s² against the measured value of 1.20 (record 2.46.1, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23506655). Both readings were formulated with the measurements already known; the tests to check them against future data are registered in the same records. In the first logical nexus between space and time — which became homogeneous with Einstein — there is a non-local phase, made only of a pure logical distinction: space is not time. Between the two there is no relation of quantitative calculation, only the logical entity they have in common, which is needed to make them exist with respect to each other. This level is not distant: it is present in every phase of reality, in every place and at every instant. It shows in entanglement, where two distant systems remain correlated more strongly than any explanation based on separate properties and free of faster-than-light influences allows, without anything physically travelling between them. In this non-local phase the two distinct terms, space and time, share only one logical element, which we shall call their greatest common divisor (GCD), just as the numbers 3 and 5 have only 1 in common. The local world arises when a relation is counted through this GCD: its multiples and its fractions form a matrix. Seen by an observer inside the system like us, the multiples appear as time and the fractions as space. When that same multiple is directly contained in the matrix of the point of observation, it turns into mass — that is, into concrete matter as we usually understand it. There is therefore a close link between time and mass, in full agreement with Einstein's relativity, which ties mass to spacetime. The observed objects, while being logically autonomous entities in their local relations, enter into relation with the observer through a logical diffraction — that is, a decomposition into fractions — of the observer's matrix. This reading also gives a reason for the limit of the speed of light, which in Einstein's relativity is instead taken as a starting principle. The speed of light is the fixed exchange rate between the multiples and the fractions of the same GCD, meaning how much space a single step of time is worth: exceeding it would mean, for some observer, covering space without counting time, and thus leaving the local world. Logic always starts from a logical relative, and this exchange rate has nothing absolute in itself either: it is a necessary relative which, inside the system, becomes an absolute hypothesis, the same for everyone and impossible to exceed. Outside the system, by contrast, it has no justification at all, because outside there is only non-existence: justifying something requires another term to relate it to, and out there there is none. Asking for a reason from outside is like asking what lies north of the North Pole. The same theoretical framework that reads space, time, mass and the observed objects also admits quantum mechanics. The non-local phase and the mirror-like logical reciprocity between the two ends of the nexus give a reason for the probabilistic behaviour of matter. When the observed object is large enough, its mass fixes it in the matrix of the point of observation: for this reason we see it in one precise place and at one precise instant. When instead the object falls below a certain mass threshold, the principal GCD (that of the point of observation) and the GCD of the diffraction that generates the object are forced to become equal, reflecting each other as in a mirror. At that point the object no longer occupies a single point of the spacetime generated by the observer, but spreads over several possible positions, and we observe it as probability. It is like having to describe the number 10 using only the number 1: the only way is to distribute the 1 over ten positions, one for each unit of the 10. Today we know that even objects made of thousands of atoms behave in this way, and no experiment has yet found the boundary. The idea that the passage from quantum to classical behaviour depends on mass is close to that of Penrose and Diósi; in MM the threshold is the point where the two GCDs, the principal one and that of the local diffraction, become equal. For all these reasons the universe behaves like a simulation without really being one. It follows exact rules, made of counts, everywhere and at every instant, but no machine runs them and no programmer wrote them: a structure of mathematical relations does not need to be computed in order to exist. Tegmark (2008) had already noted that such a simulation need not be run, while Vazza (2025) estimated that running it physically on a machine would require resources that the very laws of the universe do not allow. This record develops one aspect of the theoretical framework. The work is shared openly so that it can be judged by as many readers as possible: anyone who knows someone interested can pass on this single link, valid for the whole framework (with an overview in English and Italian): https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23535916. The entry page, with the complete list of all records, is https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22667516. To cite the framework: Lanciano, U. (2026). The number 1 in front of the mirror: Mathematical Materiality from the nexus to the cosmos. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23535916. The records have been deposited since 5 August 2026, each with its own date, and are released under CC BY 4.0: anyone may use them by citing the source. Objections and errors found are welcome at riverantares@gmail.com, since Zenodo has no space for comments. This record. In physics «non-locality» mostly names one fact: the correlations of entanglement. In Mathematical Materiality (MM) it is the foundation: a non-local phase, not located in space and time and present everywhere, of which the local world is the count made from a point. Here «non-local» means not located in space and time; it does not mean action at a distance. This record collects, from MM's published records and the author's premises, twelve phenomena in which MM's reading uses the same non-local phase as the reason, and shows that entanglement is the case in which it rests most directly on a measured datum, not the only one. There are no new calculations: the result is the unity of the reading. The twelve phenomena: the correlations of entanglement beyond Bell's limit, and their Tsirelson ceiling, set by the local reading (MM 2.48, 2.48.1); the same laws everywhere and always, as copies of the same nexus (MM 2.68); identical particles, as the same unit counted twice (a proposal of the AI); the objects two observers see alike, as two counts of one non-local relation (MM 2.62.1); the boundary of the local as a number of copies, not a distance (August status report, reread); probability and the Born rule (MM 2.48.1); the mass below which an object stops being at one point (MM 2.66); the present, and the loop in which the future chooses what is written (MM 2.48, 2.68.1); space and time themselves: a clock counting events without pre-assigned places runs at Einstein's proper time (MM 2.40.2); the limit of light, the same for everyone; dark matter as the ordinary matter of a second mirror, with no reciprocal non-local link to us (MM 2.44); the boundary within which a gravitating system reads only its own field, set by the Galaxy (MM 2.70). How each is set out. For every phenomenon: what is observed, with sources; how known physics reads it; what the non-local phase does; where the link comes from (already written in a deposit, a premise of the author, or a proposal of the AI); what rests on calculations already deposited; what remains open. In ten phenomena the link is already in the deposits or in the author's premises; in one it comes partly from the AI, and in one from the AI alone. Three ways organise them: copies without distance, existence through a link, and a reading that is always local and partial. What is not claimed. The non-local phase transmits no signals and no influences outside light cones. Today it has no distinct experimental signature: where MM gives numbers, they coincide with known physics (the Tsirelson bound, decoherence, wave optics) or come from readings with declared choices. The record also lists the other senses in which «non-local» appears in MM's records, so that they are not confused with this one. Where the reading is tested. Gaia DR4 in December 2026 (rules registered in MM 2.70) and the mass threshold, with a prediction dated 31 December 2035 (MM 2.66); five open questions from MM 2.68. Contents: REA
Why does the world look solid and definite when the physics underneath it is quantum and fuzzy? Quantum Darwinism offers an answer that adds nothing to quantum mechanics: a fact becomes objective not because someone measures it, but because the environment copies it many times over. Light, air, and surroundings each carry redundant imprints of the same property, so many observers can independently read it, agree on it, and not disturb it. Objectivity, in this view, is simply redundancy of record. Across twenty studies, this program showed that in setting after setting — ordinary measurement, broken symmetry, topological matter, gravity, black holes, the early universe, monitored circuits, reference frames, causal order, and more — the properties that become objective are always the same special kind: the ones that every observer can read without conflict. The technical name for this shared core is the "center" of the observable algebra. This paper is the program's capstone, and it does two things. First, as a synthesis, it gathers the twenty results into one coherent picture: a single master table identifying the objective core in each setting and the complementary "hidden" information left behind; one unifying trade-off principle relating what is broadcast to what stays encoded; a link between the static picture (which properties are objective) and the dynamic one (how a system crosses over from classical-like broadcasting to information-hiding); a single shared experimental signature — a "redundancy plateau" measurable on near-term quantum hardware; and a dependency map showing the whole program rests on a small common toolbox. Second, as new mathematics, it proves two results the synthesis had made precise. The classification theorem shows that any property capable of being objective must be classical in a strict sense — it cannot be freely copied unless it is, and under a symmetry the objective core is pinned down uniquely as the largest shareable part. The complementarity dichotomy shows that the trade-off laws seen across the program come in exactly two distinct families, separated by a single criterion, and proves they cannot be collapsed into one universal formula. The mathematical cores of both theorems are machine-checked in the Lean 4 proof assistant, and the quantitative claims are reproduced by self-testing code. The one-line summary: classicality is the emergence of a shared core, its objectivity is the redundancy of that core, and what the core leaves behind is the hidden, encoded remainder.
As far as classical physics is concerned, it is possible to trace causal relations between physical objects (i.e. particles in this case) back to intrinsic properties of these objects (such as their mass and charge). On this view, causal relations turn out to be internal instead of external relations, supervening on intrinsic properties of the relata (as proposed by Heil and Lowe). However, one can raise doubts about this view already in Newtonian mechanics. The decisive blow to this view comes from quantum physics, with Bell’s theorem proving that no dynamics based on local, intrinsic properties of quantum objects can yield the empirical predictions of quantum mechanics. Nonetheless, quantum entanglement by no means implies that we have to abandon an ontology of objects (i.e. substances such as particles) in favour of an ontology of structures (as claimed by French and Ladyman). Any of the known proposals for a quantum ontology of matter in space-time is committed to objects. However, on any of these proposals, what determines the dynamics of these objects are not local, intrinsic properties, but a global or holistic property instantiated by all the objects together – that is, a structure that takes all the objects in the universe as its relata. The view set out in this paper thus amounts to combining ontic structural realism with an ontology of objects that can be conceived as substances. This suggestion is illustrated by drawing on the ontology of quantum physics worked out by Bohm and Bell. 1.