Asserts it, yes - but my last sentence still applies. We don't have a fine-grained understanding of gravity; we'd need it for such a deduction. As it happens, I

Asserts it, yes - but my last sentence still applies. We don't have a fine-grained understanding of gravity; we'd need it for such a deduction. As it happens, I don't think we've ruled out that gravity itself - not just waves - slowly decays orbits. I rather expect this to be so, in fact, but on the basis of an eccentric theory of gravity.