SSMT – Declaring the Lens and Owning the Baseline (0C)

How you publish “normal,” prove you didn’t move it, and earn trust

In SSMT, temperature is not just a number. It’s a contract. The contract lives in a manifest. The manifest is what everyone can audit.

This page is about that manifest.

When you emit e_T, a_phase, Q_phase, or any other SSMT signal, you are not just sending numbers.
You are also saying:
“This is exactly how I defined ‘normal’, ‘danger’, and ‘stability’. Here are the knobs. Here are the pivots. I did not secretly change them halfway.”

That declaration — and the discipline to hold it fixed — is what makes SSMT defensible across fleets, sites, regulators, and insurers.

The manifest (plain description)

The manifest is a small published recipe. It includes, at minimum:

  • Which lens you chose
    Example: "log", "linear", "beta", "hybrid", "kBT", "qlog", etc.
  • Your anchors
    • T_ref (the declared reference temperature in Kelvin)
    • DeltaT (if using the linear or hybrid lens)
    • tau, width, alpha (if using hybrid / smooth_hybrid / qlog)
    • E_unit (for the kBT-style energy lens)
  • Your Kelvin floor
    • eps_TK (the lower bound you clamp Kelvin to for numerical safety)
  • Your phase pivots
    • Each critical pivot T_m in Kelvin
    • DeltaT_m (softness width in Kelvin)
    • c_m (sharpness)
    • a short tag like "freeze", "warp", "human_hot", etc.
  • Your hysteresis / memory knobs (if you emit Q_phase)
    • rho
    • k_side
    • how you smooth flicker around a pivot
  • Your bounded dial clamps
    • eps_a to enforce |a_T| <= 1 - eps_a
    • c_T if you emit a_T := tanh(c_T * e_T)
  • Your validity range
    • T_valid_range_K = [T_min , T_max]
    • how you flag out-of-range data (health.range_ok)
  • Your ID
    • manifest_id, which gets attached to every emitted record

If someone asks later “why did you say we were in danger at 14:03 UTC,” you don’t have to explain from memory.
You show them the manifest.
They run the math.
They get the same answer.

Why “declare once and don’t move it” matters

Quietly changing interpretation after the fact is how trust gets destroyed.

Imagine this scenario:

  • At 10:00, your baseline T_ref is 298.15 K and your “high risk” is defined as e_T >= +0.8.
  • At 10:15, the reading crosses +0.8.
    That should trigger escalation.
  • Instead of escalating, someone silently redefines what “+0.8” means or quietly nudges T_ref.

That cannot happen under SSMT without leaving fingerprints, because:

  1. T_ref is published in the manifest.
  2. The lens formula is published in the manifest.
  3. The decision logic consumes e_T, not raw °C or raw °F.
  4. Each emitted record carries manifest_id.

If you try to “move the goalposts,” you either:

  • change the manifest (which is detectable), or
  • emit a record with a manifest_id that no longer matches your math (which is also detectable).

This is not just math cleanliness. This is governance.

Owning your baseline: zero-centricity

Every supported lens in SSMT is built so that e_T = 0 means:
“We are exactly at our declared baseline.”

Examples:

# Log lens (wide span, fleet scale)
e_T := ln( T_K / T_ref )

# Linear lens (tight band process control)
e_T := ( T_K - T_ref ) / DeltaT

# Beta lens (cold-dominant regimes)
e_T := ( T_ref / T_K ) - 1

# Quantum-safe log (near absolute zero)
e_T := ln( (T_K/T_ref + alpha) / (1 + alpha) )

All of these are constructed so that when T_K == T_ref, the result is e_T = 0.
That is deliberate.
It means no matter which lens you choose — linear, log, beta, kBT, hybrid, qlog — you always get a clean “zero point” that everyone can agree on.

That zero is the center of your promise.

Why phase pivots must be declared, not guessed

In many real systems, “danger” is not “too hot or too cold.”
It’s “I am entering a region where something changes phase, weakens, gels, delaminates, or becomes unsafe for humans.”

That’s what a_phase encodes.

d_m     := ( T_K - T_m ) / DeltaT_m
a_phase := tanh( c_m * d_m )
  • T_m is the pivot (for example, freeze at 273.15 K).
  • DeltaT_m tells how soft the edge should feel.
  • c_m controls how fast urgency ramps.

Why declare it?

  • Because a battery line, a cryogenic loop, a fiber-reinforced panel, and a neonatal ICU will not share the same pivot.
  • Because “safe for aluminum panel under atmospheric conditions” is not the same pivot as “safe for human skin at direct contact.”
  • Because those pivots are not secrets. They are operational truths. And if you hide them, you cannot prove you enforced them.

When you publish {T_m, DeltaT_m, c_m, tag}, you are saying:
“We openly accept that this is the band that matters, and we are monitoring it in real time.”

That is evidence-grade.

Out-of-range handling is part of honesty

SSMT does not pretend the sensor is always healthy.

If the reading goes physically absurd (for example, outside T_valid_range_K), you do not quietly “clip and continue” without telling anyone.
You mark it.

In SSMT terms:

# if T_K is outside your declared valid range:
health.range_ok := false
oor := "below_min" | "above_max"

# for stability calculations you can use a saturated proxy:
T_K_eff := min( max(T_K, T_min), T_max )
e_T_eff := encode_eT(T_K_eff, ...)

Two important points:

  1. You admit “this was out of declared range” by setting health.range_ok := false.
  2. You still generate a stable symbolic number for dashboards/graphs so tools don’t crash.

That balance (honesty + continuity) is a core design target.

Why this is bigger than Celsius vs Fahrenheit

Once you start emitting:

  • e_T
  • a_phase
  • Q_phase (hysteresis memory)
  • manifest_id
  • health

…you are no longer arguing about “but was that 32°F or 0°C.”

You are operating under a published thermal policy.

That’s compatible with:

  • internal audits,
  • shared operations across vendors,
  • large-scale infrastructure rollouts,
  • habitat / life-support governance,
  • insurance and liability review.

In plain language:
This is how you prove you were not reckless.

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