The Universe Exists Only in the Present Moment —A Cosmological Extrapolation of the Paradox of Self-Evolution in Closed Systems

Abstract

Based on the author’s previously proven Paradox of Self-Evolution in ClosedSystems (Chen, 2026a, hereafter referred to as Paper A), this paper extrapolatesthat conclusion to a cosmological model. The conditional nature of this extrapolation is first clarified: if the universe satisfies (1) finite information capacity and(2) the absence of external storage reference frames, then all theorems of Paper Aapply automatically. Under this premise, this paper rigorously proves the followingcore propositions:The past is inaccessible: By Theorem 1 of Paper A (the Single-Step IrreversibleOverwrite Theorem), the old value is irreversibly overwritten by the new value atthe instant of transition; information about the past cannot be physically retainedand is thus equivalent to nonexistence. Even if single-step reversibility were assumed hypothetically, Theorem 2 of Paper A (the Historical Degeneracy CollapseTheorem) demonstrates that long-term degeneracy is inevitable, further precludingany possibility of recovery.The future cannot be pre-stored: If a future state already existed in the currentstorage, it could be known without invoking the evolutionary mapping, which wouldviolate the rigidity of the evolutionary direction; therefore, the future has not yetarrived.Physical reality is strictly equivalent to the current global state Uk, where thediscrete evolutionary index k is carried by the meta-instant (Yuanke). The metainstant Yk carries no information entropy (H(Yk) = 0); it merely provides an orderof succession for the sequence of states. Classical time readings are proven not tobe independent physical quantities but rather projective scalars of the current stateunder an observational function. The continuous spacetime of general relativityis reconstructed as a fitted representation under coarse-graining limits of discretelattice coupling strengths Correspondence to: abillchen@126.com