The Origin of Asymmetry: A Newtonian Mechanism for Dark Matter and Quantum Fluctuations

Dark matter and quantum fluctuations may not require new physics. This paper shows that retardation asymmetry in N-body gravity strands angular momentum in the field when back-reaction delays exceed dynamical timescales. Galactic stranding produces extended mass distributions matching dark matter halos (flat curves, cusp-core resolution, MOND scale as stranding transition). Cosmological stray spike hits create a deterministic "fluctuation" spectrum that looks exactly like quantum vacuum energy. The mechanism is scale-invariant, conservative, and emerges from the same eigenfield saddle geometry derived in the companion paper. If correct, it unifies classical gravity with the two biggest mysteries in physics.