The Sound of Silence: A Local-Limit Audit of Product-Volume Strain (v3) and a Falsifiable ACES Clock Residual

This work presents a local-limit audit of a product-volume strain framework and defines a falsifiable test using ACES-style atomic clock comparisons. The prediction is a coherent, phase-locked residual at the ISS orbital frequency (~1.81 × 10⁻⁴ Hz) in space–ground clock links after standard general relativity corrections. The expected amplitude is ~10⁻¹⁵ (Cs-equivalent), with suppressed ground leakage (~10⁻¹⁹). The signal is phase-referenced to the ISS orbital argument of latitude and should persist as a non-zero triangle-closure residual across independent clock links. Absence of such a coherent, non-absorbed component after sufficient integration falsifies this local-limit branch.