Bit-Collapse Theory: Temperature, Memory Loss, and a Thermal Route to Falsifiability

This paper isolates a thermal pathway for testing the core collapse mechanism proposed by Bit-Collapse Theory (BCT). In BCT, collapse is not treated as an objective dynamical process added to quantum mechanics, but as an informational threshold event: a definite outcome arises for an observer-system when sufficient accessible which-way information reaches a critical value, here fixed at Ic = 1 bit, and when the corresponding record persists beyond a minimal integration time tau*. The paper develops this idea through a stochastic acquisition model and an exponential memory kernel characterized by a record-loss timescale tau_loss, with thermal fluctuations entering explicitly as a noise source. On this basis, it proposes a conservative operational link between temperature and memory degradation, derives threshold predictions for interference visibility, and formulates clean refutation criteria for the thermal channel. The aim is not to introduce an independent speculative mechanism, but to clarify how the BCT collapse claim can be exposed to empirical defeat through record instability, memory loss, and temperature-dependent degradation of observer-accessible information. The result is a falsifiability-oriented extension of BCT that connects the quantum measurement problem with record persistence, thermal noise, and experimentally tractable operational tests.