Temporal Dynamics as a Driver of Cosmological Expansion: A Physically Structured Alternative to Dark Energy

Abstract

Cosmological expansion is commonly attributed to dark energy—a hypothetical component believed to permeate space and generate repulsive pressure. Yet its physical nature remains undetected, and its ontological status continues to invite debate.
This paper introduces an alternative framework: the Temporal Theory of Gravity (TTG), which treats time as an active physical field characterized by density \rho_t, flow velocity v_t, and intrinsic pressure P_t. In this paradigm, cosmic expansion emerges from the acceleration of temporal flow itself, reproducing observed phenomena without invoking vacuum energy or scalar fields.
A time-dependent metric is constructed, field equations for temporal dynamics are formulated, and the model’s predictions are shown to be observationally testable—including temporal redshift, inflation modeled as a phase transition in time density, B-mode patterns in the cosmic microwave background, and gravitational wave signals arising from temporal field gradients.
TTG reframes space as a geometric derivative of time and energy as a consequence of temporal asymmetry. It thus establishes the foundations of temporal cosmology: a falsifiable paradigm in which the geometry of time gives rise to matter, space, and cosmic expansion.