Relativistic Interaction Delays: Toward an Emergent Description of Physical Fields

Modern physics describes interactions through continuous physical fields whose mathematical formulations successfully span a wide range of physical scales. This work investigates the complementary hypothesis that such fields may themselves emerge from the cumulative relativistic delays associated with successive finite-speed interaction events. Within the proposed Cumulative Delay Framework (CDF), individual interaction delays accumulate coherently to generate effective continuum behavior. The framework identifies three accumulation modes. Spatial accumulation reproduces the effective gravitational time-dilation factor of General Relativity and predicts a correspondence between gravitational escape velocity and coherent internal propagation speed in self-gravitating bodies, consistent with seismic observations for Earth, Mars, the Moon and, within present uncertainties, Venus and the Sun. Kinematic accumulation naturally extends the same principle to galaxies and galaxy clusters without introducing additional gravitating matter. Temporal accumulation suggests a microscopic interpretation of emergent electromagnetic behavior through successive finite-speed interaction histories. Several complementary microscopic realizations, including Green-function formulations, Compton-phase synchronization and phase-slip interaction states, are discussed together with experimental predictions involving quantum tunneling, ion-implantation depth distributions and collision-cascade statistics. If supported by further theoretical and experimental investigation, the Cumulative Delay Framework suggests that gravitational, electromagnetic and potentially other continuum fields may represent emergent manifestations of accumulated relativistic interaction histories.