{
  "id": "sudden.temporal",
  "term": "sudden",
  "sense": "temporal",
  "pos": "adjective",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 12,
  "arena": "temporal",
  "domain": "window",
  "style": "window",
  "definition": "A change in a parameter that is shorter than the sampling interval of the observer's model, and thus unmodelled.",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "parameter.condition",
      "window.range",
      "model.representation",
      "change.process",
      "sample.material",
      "short.length",
      "time.dimension"
    ],
    "interaction": "A change in a condition occurs so quickly relative to the observer's sampling interval that it falls outside the model's temporal resolution, making the shift imperceptible and unrepresented.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "unmodelled transition",
      "temporal invisibility",
      "sampling gap"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The 2003 Northeast Blackout spread across 247,000 square miles in under 5 minutes, faster than grid operators' monitoring systems could register.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    },
    {
      "text": "Alpha particles from polonium-210 decay in 0.0001 nanoseconds, undetectable by standard radiation counters sampling every microsecond.",
      "domain": "physics"
    },
    {
      "text": "The flash crash of the Dow Jones on May 6, 2010, dropped 998 points in 20 minutes, unseen by daily market models.",
      "domain": "economics"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "sudden",
    "suddenly",
    "suddenness"
  ],
  "closed": false,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "retrofit:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.8,
    "sources": [
      "Sample/hundred-words-six-terms.md"
    ],
    "reconciled": {
      "by": "openrouter:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
      "date": "2026-07-31",
      "changed": "components",
      "note": "Removed 'drift.aimless' and 'model.representation' was already present; added 'change.process', 'sample.material', and 'short.length' as genuinely constitutive. 'drift.aimless' is irrelevant to the de"
    }
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-sudden.temporal"
}