THE PLANCK-EVENT FRAMEWORK: A DISCRETE SPACETIME APPROACH TO QUANTUM GRAVITY WITH TESTABLE COSMOLOGICAL SIGNATURES

Quantum gravity remains empirically inaccessible despite decades of theoretical development. We propose the Planck-Event Framework (PEF), a minimal discrete spacetime ontology grounded in a modal-ontological foundation (MO), in which spacetime is constituted by a discrete causal graph of interaction events. Time is locally constituted as the causally ordered sequence of discrete actualization events, and local unitary evolution occurs at each interaction involving momentum transfer. In the consolidated formulation presented here, momentum is not treated as fundamentally identical with the measurable momentum vector in constituted spacetime. Instead, it is interpreted as the emergent WR-level representation of a deeper ontic dimension of directed actualization defined on the abstract state space Hᴹᴿ that represents the possibility space (MR) prior to spacetime constitution. This removes the circularity objection that momentum presupposes spatial geometry while simultaneously generating it. We introduce a formal bridge between the MO actualization relation (≺) and the PEF local update rule (Uₗₒˢᵉˡ), establishing structural identity between the ontological and physical descriptions. A minimal axiomatics of direction without geometry is provided (Axioms A1–A5), and the emergence of the geometric momentum representation is formulated as a functorial coarse-graining F : (Hᴹᴿ, ≺) → (L²(ℝ³), p̂) from the pre-spatiotemporal state space to effective Hilbert-space quantum mechanics. QM and GR are thus effective coarse-grained descriptions of a single underlying causal-actualization structure. The sign ε(z) > 0 and its redshift dependence are qualitative predictions of P1–P3, falsifiable by DESI Year-3 (2027) and Euclid (2030). The amplitude ε0 is not derived – its coarse-graining derivation from Hᴹᴿ is the primary open problem. A null result at 1% precision falsifies PEF itself.