Research Roadmap

Status: Post-saturation watch-list mode (revised each iteration). Last updated: 2026-06-08

Update (post-iteration-5): the analytical program is saturated — five iterations converged on a stable PARTIAL / encodes-not-generates / not-yet-physics verdict, and the one designated verdict-flipping lever (OP-46 Lorentzian non-CKV readout) was executed and did not flip. The standing verdict is consolidated in CONCLUSION.md. Active effort now shifts from analysis to lightweight experiment-tracking (EXPERIMENT_WATCHLIST.md). The Tier-1/2 analytical items below are retained as a record of what was attacked and closed; the only genuinely-open analytical lever is OP-44/OP-CP1 (nonperturbative crossed-product fate, regime boundary $N_\ast$ ), plus the standing "what would reopen the analysis" trigger in CONCLUSION.md §8.

What to work on next, and why. Items are framed as questions to resolve or artifacts to produce, prioritized by leverage — how much a credible answer would move the central question of whether a universal theory is possible. Cross-references point to where the work lands.

Selection principle: prefer questions that are (a) load-bearing for unification, (b) at least partly decidable by existing or near-term evidence or by rigorous math, and (c) currently under-served in this wiki. De-prioritize questions whose answers would change nothing downstream.

Tier 0 — Maintenance & integrity (every iteration)

Lint pass per AGENTS.md: contradictions across pages, stale numbers, orphan pages, missing links, overclaiming, ID integrity.
Bibliography verification: replace every [unverified] in BIBLIOGRAPHY.md with a checked reference, or remove it.
Quantitative refresh: re-check measured values and tensions (e.g. $H_0$ , $S_8$ , muon $g\!-\!2$ after lattice/experiment updates) and re-tag in CONSTANTS_AND_SCALES.md.

Tier 1 — Highest leverage (drive the central question)

Sharpen the GR↔QFT interface. Make precise, in GAPS_AND_CONTRADICTIONS.md, exactly which incompatibilities are logical vs domain-of-validity. Treat gravity as an effective field theory and document what is actually known to fail (and at what scale) vs assumed to fail.
The black-hole information problem as a decisive test bed. Track the status of unitarity, the Page curve, island/replica-wormhole results, and what they do and do not establish. This is the cleanest arena where quantum theory and gravity must be reconciled.
The measurement problem, operationalized. Catalogue what each resolution (decoherence + branching, objective collapse, hidden variables, epistemic/QBist) costs and which make distinguishable predictions (e.g. collapse-model bounds from interferometry). Promote anything testable from [CONTESTED] toward decidability.
Cosmological-constant problem, stated without folklore. A careful, regularization-aware account (see CONSTANTS_AND_SCALES.md) of what is genuinely puzzling vs an artifact of naive cutoff estimates.

Tier 2 — Structural / mathematical

Assumption demotion program. For each fundamental/plausibly-fundamental entry in ASSUMPTIONS_LEDGER.md, ask: is there a derivation that would demote it? Highest-value targets: smooth-continuum spacetime, exact linearity of QM, the Born rule, locality, 3+1 dimensions.
Rigor gap in interacting QFT. Document the constructive-QFT frontier and the Yang–Mills mass-gap problem; clarify what "the Standard Model exists mathematically" would even require.
Information-theoretic reconstructions of QM. Evaluate how far axiomatic reconstructions (Hardy; entropic; CBH) actually explain the Hilbert-space formalism vs re-encode it.

Tier 3 — Candidate-framework development (gated by the verification protocol)

Emergent-spacetime program. Stress-test the entanglement→geometry claim (Ryu–Takayanagi, Jacobson's derivation, tensor networks): what would count as evidence outside AdS, and is there a falsifiable prediction? See HYPOTHESES.md, UNIFICATION_LANDSCAPE.md.
Distinguishing predictions audit. For every program in UNIFICATION_LANDSCAPE.md, record the single most plausible near-term distinguishing observation. Programs with none are flagged accordingly.

Tier 4 — Empirical anchors to monitor

Gravitational-wave catalogues (strong-field GR, possible deviations).
CMB / large-scale-structure surveys (dark sector, inflationary predictions, tensions).
Precision tests: equivalence-principle, Lorentz-invariance, and constancy-of-constants bounds (each tightens an entry in ASSUMPTIONS_LEDGER.md).
Collider / flavor / neutrino results bearing on beyond-Standard-Model structure.
Tabletop quantum-gravity proposals (gravitationally-induced entanglement) and collapse-model bounds.

Method for each iteration

Pick a small number of Tier-1/2 items.
Fan out reading; write structured findings; verify adversarially before promoting any claim (see AGENTS.md §4).
Update the affected pages in place; reconcile FINDINGS.md; log in CHANGELOG.md.
Re-ask the central question: did anything move the case for/against a universal theory? Record the delta in FINDINGS.md.