The Gravitational N–Body Problem as a Structural Artifact of State Factorization

This work reexamines the gravitational $N$–body problem from a structural and reconstructive perspective.Rather than attributing its characteristic complexity to nonlinear dynamics or intrinsic instability, the analysis isolates the organizational assumptions underlying its standard formulation. Gravitational observables are treated as outcomes of temporally extended causal reconstruction rather than as functions of instantaneous states. Within this framework, the conventional requirement of state factorization—according to which all physically relevant information must be representable on a spacelike hypersurface—is identified as a non-physical organizational constraint. It is shown that the sensitivity, instability, and formal complexity associated with the gravitational $N$–body problem arise from compressing irreducibly extended relational structure into momentary configurations. When this requirement is relaxed, no independent many-body problem remains: multiple gravitating bodies instantiate the same reconstructive constraints without introducing additional physical degrees of freedom, interaction channels, or emergent dynamics. The analysis does not modify gravitational field equations, dynamical laws, or empirical predictions. It clarifies the structural origin of gravitational complexity and reclassifies the $N$–body problem as a representational artifact of state-based description rather than a fundamental feature of gravitation.