Curious: what makes Nord shady? Their model seemed similar to Proton when I was researching the two. What’d I miss?

Yes, gravity is a theory. In scientific terms, theories are proven, repeatable, and accepted. It’s the most robust and strongest form of scientific “fact” we have (since new discoveries can change our understanding, we can’t honestly declare it indisputably factual).

When people say “I have a theory…” they usually mean “I have a hypothesis…” which is some idea or problem statement that is unproven, untested, unverified.

OP was playing off the conflation of those two things.