Lightbox Static

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What Is It?

This experiment is a stationary two-dimensional telegraph cavity with two detector patches, A and B. A pulse is emitted from one end of a narrow vertical shaft. When the opposite detector accepts enough local patch energy, it re-emits from the other end.

The result is a measured cadence: A to B, then B to A, alternating through accepted detector hits. It is intentionally not a mirror-box animation. The experiment measures wave arrival through detector logic rather than pretending to simulate specular optical reflection.

What It Tests

The Lightbox Static experiment tests whether a timing cadence can be built from local wave propagation and detector thresholds. It is modelled after CAELIX light-clock logic: patch-energy detectors, expected A/B alternation, a minimum flight-time gate and a refractory cooldown.

This makes it a timing diagnostic rather than a cinematic ray trace. The experiment asks whether local field pulses can sustain a clean detector-timed clock without relying on theatrical mirrors or a hand-scripted period.

How It Works

The field uses a scalar disturbance and velocity pair on a tall two-dimensional grid. A narrow vertical shaft is formed with hard side walls. Detector patches sit near the top and bottom of that shaft.

When a pulse is pending, it is injected at the active emitter patch using a Gaussian-in-time source. The telegraph update then carries the disturbance through the cavity. The opposite detector measures local patch energy from both the field and velocity components.

A detector hit is only accepted if it passes three gates: enough patch energy, enough time since the previous accepted hit and, after the first hit, enough minimum flight time. Once accepted, the expected detector flips and the next pulse is emitted from the opposite end.

Boundary Discipline

The outer domain uses sponge damping so escaped energy is absorbed rather than reflected back into the clock. This matters because unwanted domain reflections would corrupt the measured cadence and make the detector hits ambiguous.

The side walls of the shaft are hard, but the outer simulation boundary is not treated as a mirror. That separation keeps the cavity behaviour distinct from accidental box-edge artefacts.

What Is Not Hard-Coded

• No specular mirror reflection is simulated.
• No fixed clock period is imposed.
• No detector hit is accepted without a local energy threshold.
• No global wave solution is solved in advance.

The cadence is accepted only when the wave field produces enough local energy at the expected detector after the timing gates allow it.

Why It Matters

Light-clock arguments are easy to draw and easy to fake. This experiment keeps the mechanism deliberately modest. It does not try to claim a full relativistic construction. It builds a detector-timed wave clock and measures whether the cadence is produced by local propagation.

For CAELIX, that makes it a useful bridge between raw propagation experiments and later timing or frame-dependent tests. It establishes a simple rule: a clock tick should be an accepted event in the field, not a decorative animation cue.