the fork
Why this is decisive.
Put a mass in a spatial superposition and modulate its energy distribution at frequency ω, sweeping ω. Three theories give three different curves, and no two can be confused:
| Theory | What the sweep sees |
|---|
| General relativity (any quantization) | Nothing, at any frequency. Gravity does not intrinsically decohere. |
| Collapse models (Diósi–Penrose, GRW) | A floor — decoherence already present at rest, flat in ω. |
| Drainage (this program) | Zero at rest, a quadratic rise, and a Lorentzian knee at the drainage rate γ. |
The mechanism, in three sentences.
In this theory the vacuum monitors only violations of its own conservation law — never states — so a superposition whose branches both satisfy the ledger is perfectly protected: the static residual decays exponentially through eighteen orders of magnitude in the toy, with no floor. Modulate the mass faster than the drainage can rearrange, and the two branches write different violation histories into the vacuum's record: decoherence switches on as (dT₀₀/dt)², saturating past the knee. The full curve was measured end-to-end in the toy and matches the Lorentzian to 0.3% at every point.
bonus
The knee is chained to the solar system.
The program's γ-formula (front page) makes the knee's rigidity meaningful: γPPN = 1 exactly when the monitoring rate is state-independent — the same property that would keep the knee from sagging across gravitational potentials. Honesty requires the arithmetic: the sag test is eleven orders beyond foreseeable metrology, so Cassini binds and the knee discovers. Its role is existence: knee, floor, or nothing.
for you
If you run a levitated-mass experiment.
The signature needs: a mass superposition or its interferometric proxy, amplitude modulation of the energy distribution with a sweepable frequency, and decoherence-rate readout across two decades of ω. The shape claims (zero floor, quadratic onset exponent 2.00, saturation, knee position) are pre-registered and dimensionless — the knee's absolute frequency is the one number the theory cannot yet give you, and your null at any γ is a real exclusion. Everything is public: the registration · the script. Write to the address in the archive if you want the toy recomputed in your parameter ranges.