Clocks, Latest Ticks, and Relational Nonlocality: From Bell + No-Signalling to an Extended Spacetime Postulate

Bell experiments show that nature violates local realism while respecting stringent no-signalling constraints. The minimal “standard quantum package” accounts for this via a global quantum state that encodes nonlocal correlations but leaves open what, if anything, is happening in spacetime between distant systems. In this paper we propose a different starting point. We adopt a radiation-first and clock-first perspective on spacetime, in which worldlines are not pre-given 4D curves but growing records of the operation of massive clocks. Within this view, the latest tick of a clock acquires a clear physical status as the local boundary between realized past and open future. We then introduce an extended ontological postulate: at any given stage of their operation, there exists a physical relation between the “currently active” segments of the worldlines of distant clocks - segments between their latest and next tick - that underwrites the observed nonlocal correlations, while remaining strictly compatible with no-signalling. This postulate goes beyond the minimal quantum package without modifying any empirical predictions. It instead replaces the bare global quantum state with a more concrete relational spacetime structure. We briefly sketch how a framework we call NIM is intended to implement this structure and discuss how such an approach fits within contemporary work on quantum foundations and spacetime ontology. Keywords: Quantum nonlocality, Bell inequalities, No-signalling, Clocks and time, Spacetime ontology, Relational quantum mechanics, Primitive ontology