Gravitational Radiation as Causal Hysteresis: Deriving Orbital Decay, Structure Formation, and Anomalous Acceleration from Finite Information Latency

In General Relativity, the decay of binary orbits is attributed to the emission of gravitational waves carrying energy away from the system. We propose an alternative, operational mechanism: orbital decay arises from the finite propagation speed of causal information between interacting masses. In our "Causal Latency Theory", gravity is identified as the gradient of the information update rate tau. Consequently, a mass A is attracted not to the instantaneous position of mass B, but to its retarded position at t - r/c. This lag introduces a non-conservative tangential force component ("Causal Drag") that continuously extracts orbital energy, reproducing the phenomenon of gravitational radiation as systemic hysteresis. We validate this via N-body simulations, demonstrating that this mechanism naturally induces orbital inspiral and accelerates structure formation in chaotic clusters ("Cosmic Viscosity"). Furthermore, we analyze the relativistic wake of moving stars and identify a "Bowling Lane" effect—a narrow angle of approach where causal wake compression imparts a net velocity boost. This successfully reproduces the anomalous acceleration of interstellar object 1I/'Oumuamua and the recently observed 3I/ATLAS (C/2025 N1), identifying "dark" kinematic anomalies as signatures of the finite information update speed of causal spacetime.