Appendix J: Version history and reclassification log

This log records, in one place, how the volume's claims and their grades changed across versions, so that no upgrade is silent. Three strands are tracked: the editorial synchronization of notation and imports with the physics volume, the reclassification of the thirteen open problems as each was worked, and the grade-vocabulary change that accompanied the version 2.1 chapter additions.

This log records, in one place, how the volume's claims and their grades changed across versions, so that no upgrade is silent (the No-Tuning rule of the governance appendix permits change only by logged version-up). Three strands are tracked: the editorial synchronization with the physics volume, the reclassification of the thirteen open problems as each was worked, and the grade-vocabulary change that accompanied the v2.1 chapter additions together with the single page-badge it induced.

This log records, in one place, how the volume's claims and their grades changed across versions, so that no upgrade is silent (the No-Tuning rule of Appendix (governance) permits change only by logged version-up). Three strands are tracked: the editorial synchronization with the physics volume, the reclassification of the thirteen open problems as each was worked, and the grade-vocabulary change that accompanied the v2.1 chapter additions together with the single page-badge it induced.

Editorial changes (v1 → v2)

The v2 edition synchronized notation and imports with the physics volume (DOI \href{https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17932566}{10.5281/zenodo.17932566}), corrected ownership of the light-bending result (now derived in Ch 9 from the river flow, previously mis-cited as a physics-volume import), refined the angle-account citations, and added the mass-free 633/532 optical-closure note to Ch 2 with its verification module. No headline value changed; the changes were attributions and cross-references, each reflected in the affected chapter's text.

Reclassification log for the thirteen open problems

Each row gives the problem, its status in the first edition, its status now, what moved it, and the reproducible script (under repro/cosmology/) that did the work. The discipline throughout was to upgrade a grade only when a deterministic computation earned it, and to leave honest negatives and data-limited residuals exactly where they stand.

Grade-vocabulary change (v2 → v2.1) and the single induced reclassification

The v2.1 edition added six chapters (Ch 10–15) extending the volume into the post-Newtonian sector, gravitational waves, the dissolved cosmological puzzles, primordial nucleosynthesis, the CMB acoustic peaks, and large-scale structure. Three of these (Ch 13–15) carry the conflicting label, and to grade them the controlled grade-vocabulary—the closed token list the page-grader counts to assign each page its badge—was extended to include the token conflicting alongside the existing degenerate and distinguishing. Per the No-Tuning rule, every page's grade was then re-derived against the expanded vocabulary so that no badge changed silently.

Re-deriving against the three-token vocabulary changed the badge of exactly one pre-existing page: the governance appendix (Appendix (governance), “Governance: no-tuning, LOCK, gate”), whose badge moved from distinguishing to conflicting. The cause is mechanical and is recorded here in full so it cannot be mistaken for a substantive downgrade: the page-grader assigns the most frequent grade-token appearing in a page's body, and the governance appendix is the volume's falsification page—its subject is precisely the conditions under which a result would conflict with data and the chain that would be broken by such a conflict. It therefore uses the word “conflict(ing)” more than any other grade-token, and once that word became a counted token the modal count tipped to it. The flip is a property of what the appendix is about (falsification), not a claim that the governance framework is itself in tension with any measurement. Its content, gates, and cross-references are byte-for-byte unchanged from v2; only the computed badge moved, and it moved for a reason that is itself an argument for the honesty of the labelling scheme. No other page—including Chapter 0 and the other meta-pages, which carry no grade badge—was affected, and no headline value changed.

v2.1 → v2.2: simulation-driven reclassification of the acoustic-scale chapters

The v2.2 edition revisited the three chapters most often graded a flat conflict (Ch 13 light elements, Ch 14 CMB peaks, Ch 15 BAO) by simulation rather than argument (sim_acoustic_peaks.py, deterministic), and logged the resulting status changes here so that no reframing is silent. Three findings drove the changes. (1) The CMB harmonic series is not a property of the dispersion law but of phase coherence: synchronized initial phases give peaks in the ratio 1:2:3, random phases give a flat spectrum. (2) A single fixed inflow-shell length Rₛ reproduces the BAO bump at Rₛ and P(k) oscillation zeros at k=nπ/Rₛ (the wiggle spacing), so the observed scale follows from one length—undetermined, but bounded, and no worse than ΛCDM's reliance on Ω_bh²,Ωₘh² for the same horizon. (3) The loosest “continuous events shake the lattice” route is ruled out: random driving yields a smooth spectrum (correlation 0.99 with 1/ω²); peaks require a resonant cavity, not noise.

Accordingly: Ch 14 and Ch 15 are reframed from a bare conflict to an exploratory open program (\textsf{HYP}) with explicit, falsifiable success criteria—derive one length L≈150Mpc from the lattice constants; realize the 1:2:3 peak heights via a genuine standing wave; and do not worsen the Chapter 2 γ-ray dispersion limit. A dedicated calculation (derive_acoustic_length.py) then closes two of the three: the standing-wave cavity delivers the 1:2:3 height alternation that isolated shells cannot, and the 150Mpc background clears the γ-ray limit by 41 orders. The remaining open piece is sharpened, not patched—a scale audit shows no framework length lies within tuning-free reach of 150Mpc, so the single missing object is named precisely as a cosmological cavity length and the value-derivation stays open. Ch 13 is reframed from “deepest conflict” to an out-of-scope origin gap: the production of primordial abundances is inherently a history question the volume does not adjudicate, the framework predicts nothing different (so there is no clash to record, only an unfilled explanation), and the deuterium calculation is retained for its one positive lesson—that long stellar processing drives D/H the wrong way, so that route is not adopted. No headline value changed; what changed is the honest status described in the chapter text and the reproducibility map. A deliberate caveat on the badges: the controlled grade-vocabulary has exactly three tokens (degenerate, distinguishing, conflicting) and no token for “open program” or “out-of-scope.” The computed badges for Ch 13–15 therefore remain conflicting—the coarse-vocabulary floor for “contains an unresolved item versus a standard success”—and we did not reword the chapters to force a badge change, since engineering prose to move a token would be exactly the kind of tuning the governance rule forbids. The badge flags that something is unresolved (true: the length is not derived; the abundance origin is unexplained); the chapter text and the map carry the precise, upgraded status (mechanism-shown open program for Ch 14–15; out-of-scope origin gap for Ch 13). The \textsf{HYP} overlay is textual, exactly as for the Appendix E solar-activity conjecture, which likewise carries a normal badge with its exploratory status stated in words.

Separately, the Big-Bang singularity objection of Chapter 9 was sharpened from “a legitimate question” to a conditional impossibility: given finite-volume quanta with a jamming ceiling n_(max) a⁻³, an initial singularity (unbounded density, all energy at a point) is impossible, because no state is denser than the jammed core. The claim is bounded precisely—it forbids the singularity, not a hot or dense past at sub-jamming densities—so the volume's no-origin-claims discipline is preserved: the hot Big Bang and this framework are incompatible at exactly one point, the initial singularity, and nowhere else the volume adjudicates.