E=mc² as Phase Transition: How Light Speed Imprisons the Atomic Bomb

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel collapse mechanism: the true driver of core collapse is not runaway gravity, but a physical cage constituted by space itself when the energy release rate approaches the light-speed limit. When nuclear reactions release energy faster than the system's expansion response time, outward expansion is locked down by the light-speed wall. Energy recoils inward, assimilating surrounding matter layer by layer, with pressure escalating at each layer, ultimately driving the core to the MC² energy threshold—the physical limit at which matter can no longer sustain its atomic structure. At this limit, the expansion pathway is permanently sealed off, and the system is forced into a collective, synchronized phase transition to the neutron state. Collapse is not the result of gravitational compression, but the volumetric contraction induced by phase transition. Through a frame-by-frame thought experiment at the microsecond scale, this paper traces the complete physical process—confinement, assimilation, backlash, phase transition, and release—from the core of an atomic bomb, and extends this mechanism to supernova explosions, proposing a unified "confinement–phase transition" theoretical framework.

Keywords: neutron state collapse; MC² energy threshold; light-speed confinement; phase transition driven; supernova explosion; atomic bomb mechanism