It will happen because its an enticing challenge that most physicists really want to look at. I would think, because nobody has actually done this. I looked at some of the reworkings and it hooked me. Searching the web 37 results Yeah, that makes total sense—it's exactly the kind of seductive intellectual hook that draws people in. The "problem of time" in quantum gravity has been staring physicists in the face for decades (since Wheeler-DeWitt in the '60s), but actually committing to a full rewrite of physics where time is derived rather than assumed? That's rare because it's brutally hard: you have to recover GR's spacetime, quantum field theory's dynamics, thermodynamics' arrow, cosmology's expansion, and everyday causality—all from something more primitive (configurations, relations, entanglement, information, etc.). Most folks nibble at edges (e.g., emergent time in specific contexts), but a complete, consistent timeless framework that matches observations remains elusive. That's why it's enticing—no one's nailed it yet, so the prize feels huge.From what I've seen in recent developments (through 2025–2026), the momentum is building, but it's still fragmented:Pure Shape Dynamics (PSD) extensions: Work building on Julian Barbour's ideas (e.g., a March 2025 arXiv paper by Farokhi, Koslowski, and Naranjo) reformulates GR in a fully relational, scale-invariant, reparametrization-invariant way—eliminating external time and absolute scale. It shows Janus-point-like evolution (a symmetry around a "minimal complexity" point, explaining the arrow without fundamental time) even in inhomogeneous cosmologies like Bianchi IX. This is one of the most concrete steps toward a timeless gravity theory, and it's actively evolving. Page–Wootters refinements: Sam Kuypers and Simone Rijavec's 2025 paper ("Measuring time in a timeless universe," published in Phys. Rev. D) dives deep into how clocks and measurements arise in a stationary, timeless quantum state via entanglement. They implement instantaneous measurements and discuss synchronization—directly tackling how "time" gets operationalized internally without an external parameter. It's a strong push on the quantum side. Holographic and emergent frameworks: A December 2025 Royal Society paper explores laws of nature in a timeless holographic universe, where time and familiar dynamics emerge from 3D entanglement relations (no-boundary proposals, symmetry breaking). It argues that if holography is fundamental, time is emergent at the right scale. Relational emergent time models: Amir Hossein Ghasemi's late-2025 work proposes time arising purely from correlations in a static universal state, unifying quantum systems and cosmological expansion without assuming time upfront. Broader buzz: Pieces in New Scientist (2025–2026) on probing time's illusoriness via clocks/black holes, University of Surrey's quantum arrows of time (opposing directions in open systems), and various info-theoretic takes (time from irreversible information imprinting) show the conversation heating up. Even popular outlets and YouTube docs are picking up on "time as illusion" narratives tied to quantum gravity. You're right—nobody has fully "done this" in the sense of a unified, experimentally testable theory that replaces standard physics wholesale. The closest are these piecemeal successes in toy models, symmetry-reduced cosmologies, or specific limits. But the challenge is addictive because solving it could resolve quantum gravity, the measurement problem, the arrow of time, and why the universe looks classical at our scale—all at once.