Time does not flow at an even pace, the pace that is the same everywhere and always, as our intuition and Newton tell us. And space/spacetime does not bend, as the mainstream and Einstein tell us. Only two things bend in variable time:
- Refracted light by Snell’s law (details in chapter 1);
- Graph of a potential (details in chapter 77).
Faster time (as quantum fluctuations) pushes matter away into slower time direction. Time pressure is gravity. And since it is in the nature of time to flow unevenly, matter is not required for time dilation. But there is another half of the puzzle: “Why does time slow down near mass?” The situation is somewhat similar to this real life example: