The Principle of Temporal Inertia: An exploration of a Machian Temporal Understanding of Inertia.

 J. Rogers, SE Ohio, 21 July 2025, 0022

1. Temporal Inertia as a Universal Law of Motion

The Principle of Temporal Inertia:
"An object resists change to its time experience, unless another object transfers its time experience to it."

This principle asserts a new foundation for dynamics. Rather than viewing inertia and resistance to motion as properties deriving from mass or simply from spacetime geometry, we take the progression of each object's proper time—its unique “time experience”—as primary.

• All changes in motion (acceleration, rotation, etc.) are interpreted as alterations in an object's time experience.

• This alteration cannot happen in isolation: only interaction with another object—effectively, a transfer or blending of time experiences—can induce change.

• Thus, all traditional rules of motion, from classical inertia to relativistic effects, emerge as consequences of this universal rule: persistent motion reflects a stable time experience; acceleration is a change triggered by a new time experience, mediated by interaction.

2. Traditional Mach's Principle: Mass and Cosmic Inertia

Mach’s classic insight:

• Inertia—the resistance to motion—does not exist in isolation. Mach argued that inertia arises only relative to the mass of all other bodies in the universe; if the universe were empty, there would be no inertia127.  We posit that the field would obey inverse square law with less intertia contribution from particles farther away, but there are a lot more of them than local ones.

• This is in stark contrast to Newton, for whom inertia is absolute and needs no reference to the cosmos as a whole.

• In general relativity, Mach’s idea inspired Einstein to relate the nature of inertial frames to the distribution of mass-energy in the universe, though not every solution of Einstein’s equations fulfills Mach’s vision2.

3. Extending Mach: Inertia as Shared Temporal Experience

From mass to time:
Building on both Mach and the Principle of Temporal Inertia, inertia becomes a measure of interconnection not just via mass, but via the “shared time experience” between all particles.

• Local physical laws (such as inertia) become emergent properties of the global configuration of temporal relationships. Without others to “exchange” time with, an object cannot change its experience or motion68.

• Physical interactions are then active transfers of time experience—the deeper structure underlying forces, energy, and all classical conservation laws.

• Variations in this universal temporal field (i.e., variations in how intensely or sparsely time experiences are linked in a region) could manifest as dynamical phenomena on cosmic scales.

4. A Unified Field for Dark Matter and Dark Energy

Density variations create cosmic anomalies:

• In denser regions of the field (where more time experiences intertwine because of higher density of particles with higher time experiences), there is more “resistance”—more inertia. Objects embedded here behave as if  they are harder to move making them rotate slower.

• In less dense regions (fewer shared time connections), objects have less inertia. This would mimic the repulsive, accelerating effects seen as “dark energy and dark matter”—as inertia drops, cosmic expansion accelerates, pulling structures apart even faster. And galaxies in these areas would appear to rotate faster. 

• Thus, both dark matter and dark energy could arise as consequences of local and global fluctuations in the density of the universal time field—not as evidence for undiscovered particles or mysterious substances, but as natural outgrowths of temporal interconnection.

5. The Fate of the Universe: Inertial Death in an Expanding Time Field

As the universe expands:

• The "time field" becomes increasingly dilute.

• Fewer and fewer objects are causally connected, as their time experiences can no longer interact or “transfer.”

• Inertia everywhere trends toward zero:

  • Objects no longer meaningfully resist changes to their state; the very concepts of motion, persistence, and causality unravel.

  • The universe does not end in a cold, static state (“heat death”), but rather in a perfect causal vacuum where nothing can persist or interact—a kind of inertial death. The slightest interaction would cause particles to fly away from each other at the speed of light. 

6. Conclusion

This principle reframes the laws of motion, relativity, and cosmic evolution: Motion, inertia, and cosmic structure all emerge from the fabric of interconnected time experiences.

• Traditional inertia emerges from all mass, but is more fundamentally a phenomenon of shared temporal fields.

• The observed anomalies attributed to dark matter and dark energy are natural consequences of variations in the density of this field.

• The ultimate fate of a universe with ever-expanding time field dilution is not merely entropy’s triumph, but the complete dissolution of inertia itself, and with it, the collapse of motion, objects, and causality as we know them.

This new Principle of Temporal Inertia thus unifies and expands the foundations of dynamics into a deeply relational, Machian, and time-centric vision of physical reality.

1. https://mmapped.blog/posts/21-machs-principle.html
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach's_principle
3. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/5483/is-machs-principle-wrong
4. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0039368123001644
5. https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/284035813/On_Mach_on_Time_final_.pdf
6. https://www.arxiv.org/pdf/1106.6036v1.pdf
7. http://www.phy.olemiss.edu/~luca/Topics/m/mach.html
8. https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18703/1/On%20Mach%20On%20Time.pdf
9. https://phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Relativity/General_Relativity_(Crowell)/08:_Sources/8.08:_Mach's_Principle_Revisited
10. https://sites.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/MachPrinciple.pdf