"I would pick up something like Nigel Calder's Einstein's Universe, or similar."
Thank you
Physics is NOTHING to do with what YOU accept.
Of course it does. It is why any new idea is rejected. How many theories were there by very competent people before one guy came buy and said, hey this all describes the same thing...string theory.
Even the best people get lost in the math. They lose track of what they are actually representing with the math. The physical world is what it is. How we choose to look at it does determine what we see.
I have not seen anything that claims time factually exists independent of mass.
If that would be case, places of less density, "intergalactic space"
Will experience time more rapidly in relation to dense areas.
The more mass, the more in the past in relation to less mass. How is where you are in space relevant?
Do you believe there exists a massless anything? Or rather that we have yet to measure it's minute mass?
Do you believe there is a fundamental anything? I doubt it.
These are fantasies many physicists and mathematicians have had.
Everything is made of something. As I suspect space is. "Empty" space does not exist. Empty is the issue. Space exists.
I suppose I should shut up and seek your suggested reading material.