Abstract

In the Timothian Model, “space” is not empty. It is filled with a mass‑bearing, subatomic chunk medium — a plenum of primordial chunks with varying sizes, densities, and roles. Part of the primordial soup that once congealed into atoms never vanished; it remains as a dynamic substrate that permeates everything, including the gaps within and between atoms.

This issue recaps the fundamental properties of chunks and then applies the Timothian Model’s first principles to the filled spaces between atomic matter — what we ordinarily call “space.” From chunk diversity, Newton’s laws, and the model’s constraints (no action at a distance, no true vacuum), the aggregate properties of the chunk medium are derived, and from those properties the medium’s available processes follow.

Within this framework, previously labeled “fundamental forces” become emergent behaviors of a dynamic, interactive, fully Newtonian plenum. Stratification and restoration in a species-diverse medium provide the degrees of freedom for Archimedes-style buoyancy and gravity; organized flows and required counterflows provide the degrees of freedom for magnetism and induction; and coordinated oscillations provide the degrees of freedom for light and electromagnetic waves. Prior ether hypotheses lacked these degrees of freedom because they were treated as uniform, non-interactive, or effectively massless.

A key refinement introduced here is micro-stratification: around any persistent displacer, the medium forms a hierarchical packing in which larger chunks form a backbone, intermediate chunks fill gaps, and smaller fillers occupy remaining interstices. The resulting local species mix and deformation state (“micro-structure”) sets how gravity, drag, refraction, and wave transmissivity behave in that region.

The Nature of Space therefore functions as the model’s “operating system”: the substrate and ruleset from which the rest of the series’ mechanisms are built, and the translation layer used to reinterpret familiar empirical results from mainstream frameworks in fully local, mechanical terms.

Context

Recommended Prerequisite Reading

• Preamble to the Timothian Model – Motivating why a real medium is reintroduced.

• Model Ontology of the Timothian Model – What exists, what does not, and how familiar terms are redefined or deprecated.

• First Principles of the Timothian Model – The non‑negotiable mechanical rules (no action at a distance, Newtonian mechanics at all scales, no true vacuum, chunk‑based ontology).

• The Nature of Existence – Big‑picture scale, interactions, and the role of the medium in emergence.

You can read this issue first, but it assumes those documents exist and will be consulted when terminology or commitments feel unfamiliar.

Reader Roadmap — Where This Fits

Once you accept the medium as the ‘operating system,’ these are the modules where each major behavior is unpacked in detail:

• “How does space store tension and create gravity?”
  → The Nature of Gravity, The Nature of Stable Orbits

• “How do waves propagate, refract, disperse, or fail?”
  → The Nature of Light & Electromagnetic Waves, The Nature of Black Holes

• “How do flows and counterflows become magnetic behavior?”
  → The Nature of Magnetism, The Nature of Induction

• “What does ‘pressure’ mean if there is no vacuum?”
  → The Nature of Pressure

• “How do motion, inertia, and drag work in a filled universe?”
  → The Nature of Motion

• “How does the medium’s drive toward homogeneity produce entropy and the arrow of time?”
  → The Nature of Thermodynamics, The Nature of Entropy, The Nature of Time

Scope

Other issues in this series work at different levels:

• Lower‑level: issues like The Nature of Chunks and First Principles define what chunks are and what they are allowed to do.

• Higher‑level: issues like The Nature of Gravity, The Nature of Stable Orbits, The Nature of Atoms, Charge, and Chemical Bonds, and The Nature of Magnetism describe complex behaviors and emergent structures built out of chunks.

This issue sits between those layers. It describes the chunk medium as an aggregate: how countless individual chunk behaviors sum to a physical substrate we call “space.”

It does not attempt to re‑derive arguments already made in other issues. Instead it focuses on:

• What “space” is in the Timothian Model.

• The key properties of the chunk medium.

• The processes those properties enable.

• How this medium underpins all other forces and structures.

The issues are meant to be digested as a set, not as isolated one‑offs.

Introduction

What is “space”? What actually exists between Earth and the Moon, between the Sun and the outer planets, between galaxies, and even between atoms?

Historically, we have swung between extremes:

• Empty vacuum – Nothing at all; forces somehow “reach across” nothing.

• Non‑interacting ether – A uniform substance that carries waves but never pushes back or stratifies.

• Abstract fields in curved spacetime – Mathematical constructs that live on a geometrical background but are not themselves made of mass‑bearing stuff.

The Timothian Model takes a different step: it asserts that the same primordial soup that once formed atoms never went away. Part of it coagulated into seeds, atoms, planets, and stars. The rest remained as a mass‑bearing, interactive medium of subatomic chunks that fills all of space.

In this issue I work backwards from what a successful medium must be able to do:

• It must transmit gravity, light, magnetism, pressure, and kinetic interactions.

• It must allow atoms, molecules, stars, and galaxies to form and persist.

• It must be compatible with empirical observations, while not being forced to preserve every interpretive layer of other models.

• It must obey classical, local, mechanical rules at every step.

From those requirements, we arrive at a chunk plenum whose properties and processes are detailed below. This is the culmination of over thirty years of iteration on what “space” must be to mechanistically explain fundamental forces.

One final thought before beginning this issue properly. In the Timothian Model, Logic dictates ontology. Ontology drives prediction. Data validates and gives constraints. Too often we try to reverse engineer what should have been worked from requirements forward.

Let’s dive in.

Terms

Throughout this issue, the following terms are used interchangeably to emphasize different aspects of the same substrate:

• Space / outer space – The familiar English words, now redefined as a filled medium.

• Plenum / chunk medium / substrate – The mass‑bearing, subatomic chunk population that fills all regions where larger structures (atoms, molecules, planets, stars) are not currently displacing it.

• Freely moving chunks – Chunks not currently locked into seeds or atomic stratification spheres.

• Medium – Short for “chunk medium.”

Where context matters, I will distinguish between:

• The freely moving medium, and

• The constrained chunks that make up seeds, stratification spheres, and larger structures.

Two additional Timothian commitments matter throughout this issue:

• No Vacuum Rule: “vacuum” never means emptiness; it means “no bulk atoms/molecules,” while still being full of chunk medium.

• Conservation of Medium (local backfill): because chunk volume is invariant and gaps are forbidden, any advance of chunk volume requires equal-volume local backfill along available pathways. If local backfill cannot occur, motion is resisted and appears as tension, deformation, heating, or structural failure — not as a gap.

(Those are defined canonically in The Nature of Chunks and leveraged heavily in Motion, Pressure, and Energy.)

Detailed Treatment

Why “No Vacuum” is a conclusion, not an assumption

As we begin considering the fabric of Space itself, I want to make one clarification early: in the Timothian Model, “vacuum” is never literal emptiness. “Vacuum” means only the absence of bulk atoms and molecules; the chunk medium remains present.

This is not asserted as a stylistic preference. It is the consequence of insisting on a fully mechanical, local cause-and-effect ontology. If effects are real and local, then the “between” cannot be a literal nothing that still supports wave propagation, force transmission, or restoration behavior.

In the Timothian Model, “No Vacuum” is not an arbitrary axiom and not a resurrection of a ghostly ether. It is the outcome of a simple logical chain used throughout this series:

1. No magical thinking (mechanistic causality): every effect must be explainable by a local, mechanical cause-and-effect story. When we don’t yet know the mechanism, the honest position is “mechanism unknown” — not “mechanism absent.” Missing mechanisms imply missing degrees of freedom, not permission to abandon mechanics.

2. No action at a distance: if causes and effects are real and local, then influence cannot jump across nothingness. A causal chain must have a continuous interaction path.

3. No Vacuum: once action at a distance is rejected, the “between” cannot be literally nothing. “Nothingness” has no defined properties and cannot mediate pressure, oscillation, or restoration. If the Earth and Moon interact, if magnets influence steel across a gap, and if waves propagate through “empty” space, then there must be a physical connection path — a medium of something.

4. Chunks fill all gaps: elastic deformation plus multi-species packing allow space to be continuously filled without leaving pockets of emptiness. This same feature simultaneously supports wave propagation, stores and relaxes tension (entropy as homogeneity), and enforces local backfill during motion.

So “No Vacuum” is not an arbitrary axiom. It is retained because (so far) the Timothian Model has required no appeal to literal emptiness to explain propagation, forces, or motion — and because “empty space that still transmits” is an undefined placeholder that violates the model’s causality commitments.

Properties of Chunks

Chunks are the fundamental building blocks in the Timothian Model. They are defined as:

• Primordial – Chunks existed before atoms formed and continue to exist today.

• Ubiquitous – Chunks are everywhere — between galaxies, between planets, between atoms, and within atoms. There are no true vacuums.

• Mass‑bearing – Chunks have mass. All larger structures (atoms, molecules, stars) derive their mass from chunk content.

• Subatomic – Chunks are smaller than atoms. Atoms are conglomerates of chunks; chunks are the particulate agents that enable the mechanisms of light, gravity, magnetism, and nuclear behavior.

• Kinetically interactive – Chunks follow Newton’s Laws of Motion. They can translate and rotate, collide, transfer momentum, and exchange kinetic energy with other chunks and with larger conglomerates (atoms, molecules, celestial bodies).

• Volume invariant – Each chunk has a finite and invariant volume. It may be reshaped from its spherical state of least tension by external forces, but it never expands or contracts total volume.

• Conglomerate or separate – Chunks can move independently or as part of a mechanically interlocked system. Assemblies can form, persist, and break apart back into freely moving chunks.

Chunks are also non‑uniform:

• Varying sizes – Different chunk sizes provide degrees of freedom for stratification, packing, and wave coupling.

• Varying densities – Different density chunks respond differently to forces and flows.

• Vary in shape elastically – Shape differences in a given instance can further tune how chunks collide, pack, deform, and relax.

Therefore, chunks:

• Move independently or as part of conglomerates.

• Obey Newtonian mechanics at all scales.

• Provide the degrees of freedom needed to explain “fundamental forces” and the nuanced interactions between them.

The exploratory and explanatory power provided by understanding these chunks cannot be overstated.

What Is Space in the Timothian Model?

Space, in this model, is the aggregate behavior of countless chunks not currently locked into higher‑order structures.

I posit that:

• The universe is filled with a primordial, mass‑bearing plenum of subatomic chunks of matter.

• Chunks vary in size, density, and elastic shape.

• Chunks can be moved, rotated, elastically deformed, combined into clusters, and separated back into freely moving chunks.

• This plenum fills everywhere atomic matter does not, including gaps within and between atoms.

• The plenum is not uniform:

  • It is heterogeneous chunk‑to‑chunk.

  • Its composition and tension vary across space due to displacement by matter, flows, and waves.

• The plenum is not stationary:

  • It is constantly interacting with:

    • The displacement and motion of every atom,

    • Every electromagnetic wave oscillation,

    • Every permanent and electromagnet,

    • Every gravitational stratification.

  • Moving bodies move chunks too.

• The plenum not only interacts with atoms, it is the very substance atoms are made from and that continues to hold atoms together.

• The plenum can:

  • Oscillate (electromagnetic waves),

  • Hold tension in stratified layers (gravity and buoyancy),

  • Flow to equalize pressures (magnetism, gravity waves, jets),

  • Interact kinetically (thermal and mechanical interactions).

• The plenum’s dynamic motions can:

  • Randomly force freely moving chunks into semi‑stable and stable configurations (seeds, atoms, molecules),

  • Randomly break semi‑stable and unstable configurations back into freely moving chunks.

To understand how chunks can underwrite gravity, magnetism, light, atoms, and more, we must examine the medium in aggregate: its properties and the processes they enable.

Properties of the Chunk Medium

This section describes the key properties of the freely moving chunk medium — the substrate of space between larger objects. Later we will discuss the processes those properties support.

I will group the properties as:

• Dynamic

• Interactive

• Connective

• Generative

• Energy‑storing

• Entropy‑bound

• Wave‑permissive

• Drag‑inductive

• Hierarchically stratifiable (micro‑packing)

Dynamic

The medium is in perpetual motion, driven by gravitational, electromagnetic, and kinetic interactions at all scales.

• Atomic scale – Thermal vibrations, atomic motions, and collisions stir nearby chunks into turbulent eddies and flows. Brownian motion and diffusion are chunk‑level stories as much as atomic stories.

• Celestial scale – Planets, stars, and other mass concentrations displace the medium, generating regions of varying density and tension as the displaced chunks seek equilibrium.

• Wave scale – Gravity waves, EM waves, and other disturbances propagate as collective oscillations of chunks, rearranging local density and tension as they pass.

Matter and energy are woven into the dynamic state of the chunk medium. Nothing sits in a truly “quiet” background.

Interactive

The medium and the matter within it are intrinsically coupled.

• Atoms are conglomerates of chunks.

• The surrounding medium is the population of unbound chunks.

• At atomic scales:

  • Outer stratification spheres merge with the medium.

  • Atoms impart energy and momentum to nearby chunks (thermal and collisional).

  • Oscillations and flows in the medium can add tension to atomic stratification spheres, or if excessive, trigger ionization or reconfiguration.

• At larger scales:

  • Celestial bodies displace chunks into stratified regions.

  • The stratified medium exerts restoration forces back on those bodies (gravity and buoyancy).

  • Moving bodies experience drag as they interact kinetically with the medium and must satisfy local backfill.

The medium is not a passive background. It is an active participant in all processes.

Connective

The medium provides continuous physical connectivity across space. All interactions propagate through this shared substrate:

• Gravity – Expressed as stratification and restoration pushes transmitted through chains of chunk displacement and tension.

• Light and EM waves – Conveyed as oscillations in the medium, re‑created at each point by local chunk motions.

• Magnetic effects – Manifest as organized flows and counterflows of specific chunk species along flux paths in the medium.

• Kinetic / thermal energy – Spread via collisional chains and diffusive motion: faster chunks colliding with slower ones, sharing momentum.

• Gravity waves – Travel as density and tension ripples in the medium.

In this picture, there is no mystery “action at a distance.” Every interaction has a local path through the chunk substrate.

Generative

Despite its tendency toward homogeneity, the medium is also creative.

• Chaotic motions and collisions can randomly produce semi‑stable conglomerations of chunks.

• Most such configurations fall apart quickly; some persist long enough to participate in further stabilizing interactions.

• Over time, this can build up:

  • Seeds,

  • Atoms with stratification spheres,

  • Molecules,

  • Crystals,

  • Dust grains, planetesimals, planets, stars, and so on.

The same random motions that erode structure also occasionally build it. Generative and destructive tendencies coexist.

Energy‑Storing

The medium stores potential energy in its stratifications and deformations.

We can distinguish two closely related aspects:

1. Energy stored in the medium itself

   • Displacing chunks from a homogeneous, relaxed state into stratified, tensioned layers requires work.

   • That work is stored as:

     • Elastic deformation of chunks,

     • Structured tension across stratified regions.

   • This is the medium’s gravitational and magnetic “spring energy.”

2. Energy stored in structures

   • Stable structures (seeds, atoms, molecules, crystals) require ongoing displacement of the medium around them.

   • The energy invested in building those structures is also stored as:

     • Constrained chunk positions,

     • Stratification displacements,

     • Local deformation patterns.

When such structures dissolve, their stored energy returns as kinetic motions of chunks and as new waves in the medium.

Entropy‑Bound

The medium has an intrinsic drive toward homogeneity.

In Timothian terms:

• A fully homogeneous medium, where any small sample statistically matches any other, is the highest entropy / lowest tension state, not the most “chaotic” in a colloquial sense.

• Any structured stratification or localized pattern represents:

  • More order,

  • More uneven deformation and tension,

  • A local decrease in entropy relative to the homogeneous baseline.

At the chunk level this is mechanical:

• Each freely moving chunk has a least‑tension shape, approximately spherical.

• Stratification, flows, and structures deform chunks unevenly.

• When external forcing relaxes, chunks rearrange to:

  • Share deformation more evenly,

  • Minimize peak tensions,

  • Move toward a more homogeneous configuration of chunk shapes, densities, and motions.

Electromagnetic oscillations, impacts, and gravitational rearrangements constantly test structures and stratifications. Semi‑stable and unstable configurations are gradually eroded; the ledger trends toward homogeneity subject to constraints.

Wave‑Permissive

The medium is wave‑permissive: chunks can oscillate collectively to carry disturbances.

• EM waves – Local oscillations of charges and stratified chunks induce matching oscillations in nearby chunks, propagating light and other EM waves.

• Gravity waves – Alternating densifications and relaxations of chunk density and tension ripple outward from massive events (mergers, collapses).

• Other waves – Any concerted pattern of chunk motion that reinforces itself can travel some distance before being damped.

Which frequencies can propagate, how fast they travel, and how quickly they attenuate all depend on the local chunk species mix, packing, and deformation state — a point we’ll refine shortly.

Drag‑Inductive

Any atomic object moving relative to the chunk medium experiences drag:

• It collides with chunks inside and around it.

• It transfers momentum to those chunks, which carry that energy away through further collisions.

• The faster the object moves, the more chunks it encounters per unit time, and the more energy it transfers to the medium.

Because the medium penetrates bodies (filling all non‑displaced volume), drag is volumetric, not just surface‑based. Every atom in the body participates.

At extreme speeds, drag can be severe enough to:

• Heat objects through internal collisions with chunks.

• Tear atomic and molecular structures apart.

At ordinary speeds, drag is subtle but always present. No motion occurs without affecting the medium.

Hierarchically Stratifiable (Micro‑Packing)

A crucial refinement is that stratification is not just “more dense closer in, less dense farther out.” It is hierarchical micro‑packing.

Around any persistent displacer (seed, planet, star):

• The medium must fill all available volume without gaps (No Vacuum Rule).

• Chunks can:

  • Elastically deform (increasing their internal spring tension), or

  • Recruit smaller chunk species to fill gaps with less deformation.

The actual packing at each radius is the configuration that:

• Satisfies volume coverage (no vacuums),

• Maintains force balance,

• Minimizes total tension in the medium’s tension ledger, given:

  • Available chunk species,

  • Local displacement and stratification,

  • Existing flows and waves.

The result:

• Larger, more massive chunks form the backbone of the packing.

• Medium‑sized chunks fill the spaces between those backbones.

• Smaller and smallest chunks occupy the remaining interstices, often more deformed but also more agile.

This species‑plus‑deformation profile is what “density” really means here. Different radii around a body have different:

• Species counts,

• Packing geometries,

• Deformation states,

and therefore respond differently to forces and waves.

Processes of the Chunk Medium

With the medium’s properties in hand, we can now describe the key processes it supports.

I will group them as:

• Local disturbances by objects

• Local pressure imbalances

• Zonal pressure imbalances

• Momentary EM disturbances

• Local stratification tensions

• Thermal conduction

• Dual‑natured architecture (creative + destructive)

• Self‑organization

• Interactive drag

Local Disturbances by Objects

Any object moving through the medium (including seeds, atoms, and larger bodies) creates local disturbances:

• Its atoms collide with chunks in their path, imparting kinetic energy.

• Impacted chunks move and then collide with others, spreading energy outward.

• This creates wakes of:

  • Increased chunk speed,

  • Local pressure variations,

  • Transient density fluctuations.

Faster objects impart more energy. Heavier or denser objects interact with more chunks per unit volume. The wake decays as the medium redistributes energy and tension.

Gravity waves and EM waves can be understood as specialized cases of such disturbances, where patterns reinforce and travel coherently rather than diffusing immediately.

Local Pressure Imbalances

Whenever some subset of chunks is organized into a directional flow or a localized over‑ or under‑density, pressure imbalances arise:

• In magnets and coils, particular chunk species are rectified into directional flows, creating high‑ and low‑pressure regions.

• Other chunk species and nearby regions adjust, flowing to equalize pressure.

• These balancing flows trace out loops in the medium — what we macroscopically visualize as magnetic field lines.

Local pressure imbalances and the flows that equalize them are the mechanical root of magnetic phenomena. Detailed treatment lives in the issues: The Nature of Magnetism and The Nature of Induction.

Zonal Pressure Imbalances

On larger scales, major events can create zonal pressure imbalances:

• Star collapses, neutron star mergers, and black hole mergers abruptly rearrange matter and medium.

• The surrounding chunk population is left with steep tension and density gradients.

• The medium responds with large‑scale flows and oscillations as it tries to smooth these gradients.

These zonal equalization flows manifest as gravitational waves — propagating disturbances in the chunk medium that carry stratification tension away from a changing source.

• Ripples in chunk density and tension move outward through the existing gravitational stratification.

• As they pass through a region, they transiently stretch and relax bodies by driving tiny flows of chunk species into and out of those bodies and their surrounding stratification, before the medium settles back toward equilibrium.

Momentary EM Disturbances

When local charges and stratification spheres are jolted (e.g., by acceleration, collisions, atomic transitions), they can impose momentary oscillations on the surrounding medium:

• If the frequency of that oscillation matches the response of certain chunk species and packings, a resonant wave can form.

• Nearby chunks are driven to oscillate; they, in turn, drive their neighbors.

• A self‑reinforcing pattern propagates outward as an EM wave.

The medium’s composition and micro‑stratification determine:

• Which frequencies propagate efficiently,

• How fast they travel,

• How they refract, reflect, or absorb.

Photon behavior in this model is an emergent description of these discrete, self‑sustaining EM disturbances. Details appear in the issue: The Nature of Light & Electromagnetic Waves.

Local Stratification Tensions

When matter is present, it stratifies the medium:

• Seeds and atoms displace chunks, pushing them outward.

• Gravity and buoyancy sort chunk species into layered distributions.

• The medium’s deformation and tension ledger encodes this structure.

Stratification:

• Stores energy as structured tension,

• Modifies how waves propagate,

• Sets buoyant points for bodies,

• Is the mechanical basis for gravity.

The issues, The Nature of Gravity and The Nature of Stable Orbits, build directly on this picture.

Thermal Conduction

Thermal energy is just chunk agitation:

• Hotter regions have chunks with higher average kinetic energy.

• Collisions between chunks and between chunks and atoms transfer energy from faster to slower movers.

• Over time, this leads to diffusive spreading of thermal energy.

Because the medium penetrates matter, thermal conduction is a two‑way street:

• Atoms heat the medium; the medium heats atoms.

Details and implications are developed in the issue, The Nature of Thermodynamics.

Dual‑Natured Architect

The medium is a dual‑natured architect:

• Random motion as creative force – Random chunk collisions can spontaneously produce semi‑stable structures:

  • Seeds,

  • Stable stratification spheres,

  • Early molecular assemblies.

• Random motion as destructive force – The same collisions can:

  • Erode edges,

  • Break weak bonds,

  • Destabilize marginal configurations.

Creation and destruction are both statistical outcomes of the medium’s chaotic base state. Stability at any level is always conditional on the surrounding conditions and ongoing interactions.

Self‑Organizing

Despite being entropy‑bound, the medium exhibits self‑organization:

• Locally, random interactions can accumulate into repeating patterns and feedbacks.

• Those patterns modify the medium around them:

  • Changing stratification,

  • Redirecting flows,

  • Biasing how future interactions occur.

• Over long times and large scales, this bootstraps:

  • Atoms from chunks,

  • Molecules from atoms,

  • Crystals and fluids from molecules,

  • Planets and stars from dust,

  • Galaxies from clouds,

  • Life from complex chemistry.

The same Newtonian rules apply at each step; what changes is the complexity of patterns.

Interactive Drag

Drag is a special case that combines many of the medium’s properties:

• Dynamic,

• Interactive,

• Connective,

• Micro‑stratified.

It is important enough to receive its own section below.

The Drag of Space

If space is filled with mass‑bearing chunks, then any object moving relative to the medium will experience drag. Both the object’s properties and the local medium’s properties matter.

(For deeper treatment — especially the relationship between drag, inertia, relative solidity, and disintegration velocity — see the issues The Nature of Motion and The Nature of Pressure.)

Object‑Side Influences on Drag

For a given medium:

• Object speed – Faster objects encounter more chunks per unit time → more collisions → more drag.

• Object density – Denser objects pack more atoms into a given volume:

  • More atomic surfaces for chunks to interact with,

  • More cumulative momentum transfer → higher drag.

• Object size (at fixed density) – Larger objects have more volume and surface area:

  • More atoms interacting with the medium,

  • Greater total drag.

Medium‑Side Influences on Drag

For a given object:

• Medium speed relative to the object – If the medium “winds” through the object (e.g., near fast rotating bodies), relative speed increases collision rates and drag.

• Medium density – Denser regions contain more chunks per volume and frequently more massive chunks:

  • Harder to push aside,

  • Higher drag.

• Medium stiffness (effective springiness) – Regions with highly deformed, tightly packed chunks resist further displacement:

  • Stronger “spring” response,

  • Increased drag on bodies trying to push through.

Cumulatively:

The more that chunks and atoms collide and exchange momentum due to relative motion, the more drag the object experiences.

Notional Factors Impacting Drag

Traditional physics models often treat the vacuum as non‑interactive. In this model, the medium is both real and involved, so drag and related effects must be considered.

The following matrix in Table 1 illustrates how quickly drag becomes not-trivial. It is a simple thought experiment, not a catalog of measured values.

Its purpose is to make one point: once you populate space with a real medium, drag is no longer something you can ignore. It becomes one of the levers that shapes orbital evolution, energy loss, and stability — especially near massive or highly active bodies. It’s job is to show how many parameters matter, not to provide numerical predictions.

For more detailed discussion of drag, especially unbalanced rotational drag and its implications for orbits, see the issue, The Nature of Stable Orbits.

Table 1: Notional Factors Impacting Drag

Micro‑Stratification and Hierarchical Packing

Earlier we introduced micro‑stratification as a property; here we make it concrete.

Around any long‑lived displacer (atom, planet, star, black hole), three facts must be reconciled:

1. No vacuums – Every gap must be occupied by something; chunks cannot leave pockets of nothing.

2. Finite chunk volume and elasticity – Chunks can elastically deform, but not arbitrarily; each deformation carries spring tension.

3. Multiple chunk species – Different sizes and densities are available to fill space.

When matter displaces the medium and gravity organizes the medium around that displacement, the medium chooses among options:

• Option A: Deform existing chunks more

Stuff the same species into a given region by deforming them further. This increases local tension.

• Option B: Recruit smaller fillers

Bring in smaller chunk species that can slip into interstices with less deformation.

The actual micro‑stratification pattern at each radius is the configuration that:

• Satisfies volume coverage,

• Balances forces,

• Minimizes the total spring tension across all chunks involved.

The outcome is a hierarchical packing:

• Backbone – Larger, denser chunks dominate volume near the displacer, but leave interstitial geometry between them.

• Intermediate fillers – Medium‑sized chunks occupy many of those interstices, sharing some of the load.

• Fine fillers – Smaller chunks fill remaining interstices; they are often more deformed but can respond rapidly to high‑frequency disturbances.

This matters because:

• Gravity, buoyancy, inertia/drag, and pressure behavior depend not just on “how much medium” is there, but on which species are carrying tension and how deformed they are.

• EM waves of different frequencies couple to different parts of this hierarchy:

  • Low frequencies tend to move heavier backbones.

  • Higher frequencies primarily shake smaller fillers.

• Changes in micro‑stratification over time (e.g., due to rotation, waves, or rearrangements) change local effective constants like:

  • Effective G′ in gravity,

  • Effective permittivity/permeability analogs for EM waves.

In short, a “denser region” in Timothian space is really:

A region where chunk species and deformation are biased in particular ways, not just a place with more anonymous “stuff.”

The issue The Nature of Pressure develops this further in terms of species‑specific pressure regimes and frequency response.

The Medium, Entropy, and Homogeneity

Earlier I defined the medium as entropy‑bound and noted that homogeneity is the true high‑entropy state. Here is the mechanical reason.

Each chunk behaves like a tiny, elastic object:

• Left alone, it tends toward a least‑tension shape (nearly spherical).

• When pushed, crowded, or sheared in a structured way, it deforms and stores elastic energy.

Any inhomogeneous configuration — stratifications, flows, structures — leads to unequal deformation:

• Some chunks are more distorted,

• Some are less,

• Some are forced into strongly anisotropic shapes.

When external forcing relaxes or redistributes, chunks will:

• Move and rotate so as to share deformation more evenly,

• Reduce peak tensions,

• Shed structured distortions through waves, flows, and collisions.

The macro‑level manifestation of that is:

The medium tends toward a statistically homogeneous state where deformation energy per chunk is minimized and shared broadly, subject to constraints.

Entropy increase, in this model, is:

• Not “increasing chaos” in the abstract.

• It is the spreading and relaxing of deformation and tension in the chunk population — the flattening of the ledger: density gradients, species gradients, motion gradients, and deformation gradients.

Stratification, structures, and flows are local deviations from that tendency. They can persist for long times, but they are always “running a tab” in the tension ledger.

The issues, The Nature of Entropy and The Nature of Thermodynamics, develop this more formally.

A Logical Deduction of the Chunk Medium

We can summarize the case for a chunk medium in a sequence of steps:

1. Experiments and observations show that matter experiences forces: gravity, electromagnetism, and nuclear forces.

2. For each force, there must be a physical mechanism for its propagation. Pure action at a distance is mechanically and logically unsatisfactory.

3. These forces exhibit features — quantization, wave‑like behavior, finite propagation speeds — that are most naturally supported by a substantive substrate, not by pure emptiness.

4. Light, in particular, shows clear wave phenomena (interference, diffraction, refraction). Historically this demanded a medium. Removing the medium removed the intuitive mechanism but not the behaviors.

5. Gravity affects light’s path, which means light propagation is sensitive to something in regions where gravity is significant.

6. A universal medium that transmits both EM and gravitational effects must have:

   • Granularity (to support quantization),

   • Elasticity (to support waves),

   • Mass and inertia (to interact with matter).

7. Observed variability in wave propagation (dispersion, absorption) suggests the medium is not uniform; its properties vary by location and condition.

8. A dynamic, heterogeneous medium with intrinsic variability naturally explains diverse phenomena without requiring fields or spacetime to be fundamental objects.

9. Therefore a universal, granular, dynamic medium is a highly plausible underlying substrate for observed forces and structures.

10. The subatomic chunk medium of the Timothian Model is a concrete realization of that substrate: it fills space, carries tension and waves, and is itself the building material for all higher structures.

The Timothian Medium and the Michelson–Morley Style Experiments

The Michelson–Morley interferometer experiment (1887) is often cited as having “disproven the ether.” In practice, it disproved a specific ether concept: a stationary, uniform, non-interacting background with respect to which Earth should experience a measurable “wind.” [1]

Importantly, Michelson–Morley is no longer just a single historical apparatus — it is now a class of experiments. Over the last century, the core question (“does light propagation in a laboratory show an orientation-dependent anisotropy that reveals a preferred drift frame?”) has been revisited with dramatically different technologies and far higher sensitivity. Modern Michelson–Morley-style tests commonly use stabilized optical or microwave resonators and search for tiny orientation-dependent frequency shifts as the apparatus is rotated and as Earth rotates and orbits. These experiments continue to report null results at extremely high precision. [2–5,8]

Michelson–Morley style experiments do not directly test whether a medium exists; they test whether there is a detectable orientation dependence in propagation within the laboratory. In practice they constrain two physical quantities in the measurement zone:

1. Any persistent relative drift (slip) between the apparatus and the local wave-carrying environment that would manifest as directional anisotropy or modulation, and

2. Any persistent anisotropy in the medium’s local micro-structure that would make propagation directionally “stiffer” or “faster” along one axis than another.

A null result therefore means: within the sensitivity of the experiment, the lab region shows no detectable orientation dependence to the limits of those tests. [2–5,8] In Timothian terms, that behavior is consistent with a locally co-moving, locally isotropic propagation environment. That is a strong constraint on slip and anisotropy — it is not, by itself, a proof that no medium exists.

Examples (illustrative, not exhaustive):

• Cryogenic optical resonators (year-long Earth-rotation study) — comparing orthogonal cryogenic optical resonators constrained anisotropy at roughly parts in 10^15. [2]

• Continuously rotating optical resonator — rotating-cavity tests constrained anisotropy-related parameters at roughly parts in 10^16. [3]

• Rotating optical cavity (one-year data analysis) — improved rotating-cavity implementations report limits at roughly the 10^-17 level. [4]

• Ultrastable microwave oscillator / resonator systems — a modern “MM” implementation constrained orientation-dependent relative frequency changes at the ~10^−18 level (terrestrial photon-sector sensitivity). [5]

• Matter-sector analogues (MM‑type orientation tests using atomic clocks/orbitals) — related experiments test orientation dependence in bound matter degrees of freedom and report extremely stringent constraints in that domain as well. [6,7]

Why Michelson–Morley Style Experiments See “No Wind” (in Timothian terms)

In the Timothian Model:

1. The Sun is immersed in the chunk medium and rotates.

2. Rotation plus gravity entrain the nearby medium into partial co-rotation (a frame-dragging-like behavior, but expressed as literal medium entrainment).

3. Earth co-moves with this entrained medium as it orbits, and Earth itself entrains its local region.

Over eons:

• The local medium, the Sun, and Earth can approach a near speed‑matched state in Earth’s orbital region.

• A terrestrial apparatus then compares light propagation in directions that are all effectively co-moving with the local medium at the apparatus scale.

• No ether wind is detected, not because there is no medium, but because the medium and apparatus share the same motion to the experiment’s resolution.

Modern MM-style tests are often explicitly designed to look for rotation-, sidereal-, and annual-modulation signatures in orientation-dependent frequency shifts. [3–5,8] In Timothian framing, null results tightly constrain any residual slip and any persistent anisotropy in the local micro-structure of the medium in the measurement zone — they do not logically exclude a real medium that is strongly coupled and locally co-moving with matter.

The experiment was:

• Precise about detecting anisotropy or slip relative to the laboratory, [2–5,8]

• Not a logical discriminator between “no medium exists” versus “a real medium exists but is locally entrained and isotropic at the tested scale.”

So the broad conclusion “there is no medium at all” exceeds what the apparatus class can logically support. In Timothian framing, it is a Type III error: a correct null result for the wrong categorical claim. The null constrains residual slip/anisotropy, not the existence of a co-moving medium.

The stronger claim “no medium exists” only follows if one assumes a medium must be globally stationary and non‑entrained, so that Earth necessarily plows through it with a large, persistent relative wind. But that premise is not demanded by the data. In the Timothian Model, the medium is mass-bearing and strongly interactive, so long-lived gravitating and rotating systems naturally entrain their local region and damp shear over time. Under that condition, “no wind detected” is exactly what MM-style experiments should report: not because space is empty, but because the apparatus and local medium are already nearly speed-matched.

In Timothian terms, the best chance of detecting a residual drift is to run a Michelson–Morley-style resonator experiment in regions where entrainment should be weaker or strongly sheared (e.g., higher orbits / deep space trajectories), or to compare instruments across zones predicted to differ in local micro-stratification.

The Timothian medium is consistent with Michelson–Morley’s null, while still providing a mechanical substrate for light and gravity.

See Figure 1. A helpful way to visualize this (conceptually, not numerically) is:

• A rotating star (Sun) sits in the chunk medium.

• Concentric “bands” of medium around it rotate as well, but with decreasing co-rotation farther out.

• A planet (Earth) orbits inside one of those bands, partially speed-matched to the local medium.

This figure visualizes the qualitative intuition behind why a local apparatus may not register an “ether wind” even in a real medium. As discussed in the issue, The Nature of Stable Orbits, a rotating star interacts kinetically with the medium, simultaneously stirring, entraining, and stratifying the surrounding medium. This rotating flow pushes planets until they reach equilibrium co‑rotation / local speed‑matching with the medium, with the medium’s rotation powered by the star’s spinning atomic structures.

The Medium, Quantization, and Fundamental Interactions

The chunk medium is the common substrate behind all forces:

• Gravity – Emerges from stratification and restoration pushes; buoyancy in a stratified medium explains “falling” and orbits. See the issue The Nature of Gravity and The Nature of Stable Orbits.

• Electromagnetism – Emerges from oscillations and organized flows in the medium. See the issues, The Nature of Light & Electromagnetic Waves and The Nature of Magnetism.

• Nuclear forces – Emergent from chunk packing, stratification, and lubricant‑mediated rearrangements in seeds and atomic strata. See the issues, The Nature of Atomic Stability and The Nature of Radioactive Decay.

Quantization arises naturally:

• Stable configurations of seeds and stratification spheres correspond to discrete mechanical patterns in the medium.

• Only certain arrangements of chunks and lubricants satisfy all constraints:

  • Finite volume,

  • Elastic limits,

  • Local force balance,

  • Sufficient lubrication but not too much.

Those discrete patterns show up as:

• Atomic energy levels,

• Line spectra,

• Allowed bonding configurations.

Wave phenomena emerge from:

• Superposition of disturbances,

• Interference patterns in the medium’s oscillations,

• Frequency‑dependent coupling to micro‑stratification.

Refraction and dispersion emerge from:

• Different propagation speeds in regions with different species mixes and deformation profiles.

The medium’s richness at small scales is what allows both quantization and continuity to coexist at larger scales.

Space’s Expansion (Status in the Model)

At this stage, the Timothian Model is deliberately silent on the global expansion history of the universe. The chunk medium framework can support multiple possibilities:

• Expanding – Net kinetic and EM energy in the medium drives dispersal that overwhelms gravity at the largest scales.

• Contracting – Gravity dominates; all chunks and structures are slowly drawn into a future collapse.

• Steady state – Large‑scale expansion and contraction tendencies balance, maintaining a quasi‑equilibrium.

• Locally mixed – Different regions exhibit different behaviors (expansion, collapse, near steady), depending on local matter and medium conditions.

• Cyclical – Phases of expansion and contraction alternate as large‑scale tension and structure reorganize.

Any of these could, in principle, be built on a chunk medium, but adjudicating between them requires cosmological data and modeling beyond the scope of this issue. Here, the focus is strictly on what space is, not on how the universe as a whole evolves.

Conclusions

This issue builds directly on the Preamble’s paradigm shift:

“The primordial soup partially congealed into atoms and the rest of it remains as a modern ubiquitous medium.”

From that starting point, we have:

• Defined chunks as mass‑bearing, elastic, interactive, and non‑uniform.

• Described space as a plenum of freely moving chunks that fills every gap not already occupied by seeds and atomic structures.

• Enumerated the medium’s key properties: dynamic, interactive, connective, generative, energy‑storing, entropy‑bound, wave‑permissive, drag‑inductive, and hierarchically stratifiable.

• Explained how these properties give rise to complex processes:

  • Local and zonal pressure equalization,

  • Gravity waves and EM waves,

  • Drag and diffusion,

  • Creation and destruction of structure,

  • Self‑organization across scales.

• Introduced micro‑stratification and hierarchical packing as the refined picture behind “density gradients” in the medium.

• Shown how chunk‑level elastic deformation provides the mechanical root of the medium’s drive toward homogeneity (entropy).

• Narrowly reinterpreted Michelson–Morley style experiments as ruling out one specific ether concept, not all possible media.

Most importantly:

• The chunk medium gives us a single, mechanical ontology for:

  • Gravity and buoyancy,

  • Magnetism and induction,

  • Light and EM waves,

  • Pressure and thermodynamics,

  • Atomic stability and nuclear behavior.

From here, the rest of the series picks up:

• The Nature of Gravity applies this stratified medium to explain falling, orbits, and buoyancy in the subatomic ocean.

• The Nature of Stable Orbits extends drag and stratification to orbital dynamics.

• The Nature of Magnetism and The Nature of Induction unpack local pressure imbalances and chunk flows.

• The Nature of Light & Electromagnetic Waves leverages the medium’s wave‑permissive and micro‑stratified behavior.

• The Nature of Thermodynamics and The Nature of Entropy build on the tension ledger and chunk‑level relaxation story.

• The Nature of Atoms, Charge, and Chemical Bonds shows how seeds and stratification spheres are nothing more than stable configurations of chunks in this medium.

If you understand this issue, you now have the substrate for all the others: a universe where space is not emptiness, but a vast, dynamic, interactive ocean of chunks.

Everything else is what waves, flows, and structures in that ocean look like.

Selected References for this Section

[1] A. A. Michelson and E. W. Morley, “On the Relative Motion of the Earth and the Luminiferous Ether,” American Journal of Science (Series 3) 34(203), 333–345 (1887).
Primary (free full text): https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Relative_Motion_of_the_Earth_and_the_Luminiferous_Ether
DOI: 10.2475/ajs.s3-34.203.333

[2] H. Müller, S. Herrmann, C. Braxmaier, S. Schiller, and A. Peters, “Modern Michelson–Morley Experiment using Cryogenic Optical Resonators,” Physical Review Letters 91, 020401 (2003).
Primary (free full text): https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0305117
arXiv: physics/0305117
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.020401

[3] S. Herrmann, A. Senger, E. Kovalchuk, H. Müller, and A. Peters, “Test of the Isotropy of the Speed of Light Using a Continuously Rotating Optical Resonator,” Physical Review Letters 95, 150401 (2005).
Primary (free full text): https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0508097
arXiv: physics/0508097
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.150401

[4] S. Herrmann, A. Senger, K. Möhle, M. Nagel, E. V. Kovalchuk, and A. Peters, “Rotating optical cavity experiment testing Lorentz invariance at the 10^−17 level,” Physical Review D 80, 105011 (2009).
Primary (free full text): https://arxiv.org/abs/1002.1284
arXiv: 1002.1284
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.80.105011

[5] M. Nagel, S. R. Parker, E. V. Kovalchuk, P. L. Stanwix, J. G. Hartnett, E. N. Ivanov, A. Peters, and M. E. Tobar, “Direct terrestrial test of Lorentz symmetry in electrodynamics to 10^−18,” Nature Communications 6, 8174 (2015).
Primary (free full text): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4569797/
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9174
arXiv: 1412.6954

[6] P. Wolf, F. Chapelet, S. Bize, and A. Clairon, “Cold Atom Clock Test of Lorentz Invariance in the Matter Sector,” Physical Review Letters 96, 060801 (2006).
Primary (free full text): https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0601024
arXiv: hep-ph/0601024
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.060801

[7] T. Pruttivarasin, M. Ramm, S. G. Porsev, I. I. Tupitsyn, M. S. Safronova, M. A. Hohensee, and H. Häffner, “Michelson–Morley analogue for electrons using trapped ions to test Lorentz symmetry,” Nature 517(7536), 592–595 (2015).
Primary (free full text): https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.2194
arXiv: 1412.2194
DOI: 10.1038/nature14091

[8] H. Müller, P. L. Stanwix, M. E. Tobar, E. Ivanov, P. Wolf, S. Herrmann, A. Senger, E. Kovalchuk, and A. Peters, “Tests of Relativity by Complementary Rotating Michelson–Morley Experiments,” Physical Review Letters 99, 050401 (2007).
Primary (free full text): https://arxiv.org/abs/0706.2031
arXiv: 0706.2031
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.050401

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