Atemporal Limits of Emergent Time: Black Holes, Horizons, and the Saturation of Temporal Capacity

This paper extends an emergent-time framework in which physical time is not taken as fundamental, but arises locally through irreversible classical record formation. Building on the Future Contraction Postulate and the interpretation of mass as temporal capacity developed in earlier work, the present analysis examines black holes within an emergent-time ontology.

Black holes are not treated as pathological failures of classical description, but as limiting regimes of time generation: systems in which temporal capacity is maximized while access to future realization is progressively suppressed. Event horizons function as boundaries beyond which further local time generation becomes inaccessible to external observers, and singularities are understood as capacity-saturated limits rather than geometric points within classical spacetime.

A classification of physical regimes is introduced, in which flat spacetime appears as an emergent interface between regimes of vanishing temporal activity (vacuum) and maximal temporal storage (black holes). Within this framework, Hawking radiation is interpreted as a gradual release of stored temporal capacity, returning realized time to the external universe.

No new dynamics or constants are introduced. The contribution is interpretive rather than dynamical, preserving the empirical content of general relativity and quantum theory while clarifying the role of horizons, singularities, and cosmological limits within an emergent-time framework.