Sequential Time Theory: An Audit-Based Comparison of LIGO Using STT-CR

This paper does not challenge the observational fact of LIGO’s gravitational-wave detections. Instead, it examines a maximal interpretation often associated with those detections: that LIGO strongly supports the physical reality of spacetime and thereby naturally motivates a four-dimensional ontology. Using the audit vocabulary of STT-CR, the paper reformulates the LIGO case in terms of the relation among observable output OOO, measurement protocols PPP, calibration structure CCC, and theoretical variables Θsys\Theta_{\mathrm{sys}}Θsys. Within STT-CR, explanatory accountability is carried by the map (Θsys,P,C)→O(\Theta_{\mathrm{sys}},P,C)\to O(Θsys,P,C)→O, while elements that do not participate in this map are treated as OverΘ\ThetaΘ. The paper shows that both general relativity and Sequential Time Theory can, at the level of the LIGO observational core, be cast as isomorphic observation maps. On the STT side, time is defined as an accumulation of local state-transitions, allowing the interferometric phase difference to be reconstructed without assuming that a four-dimensional spacetime ontology is observationally mandatory. The conclusion is limited but precise: LIGO strongly supports the predictive core of general relativity, yet LIGO data alone do not uniquely force a block-universe interpretation.