When I read this earlier, it reminded me of the YORP Effect.
Upvoted for your implicitly stated point that novel things can have relatively mundane explanations, so we shouldn't expect them to always have novel explanations (e.g. GR bending starlight around the Sun, etc.). An old point (almost certainly made in the sequences somewhere), but a good one.
Paper here. Lay summary here. Some bits from the latter: