Some thoughts on space and time

Gravity slows down the effect that we call time. Time passes a slower around an object as its mass increases. Stand near one of the pyramids and time seems to pass a minuscule amount slower than if you are beyond its gravitation influence. Astronauts experience time a little faster when in orbit than on the ground unless they are moving fast enough to counter it. The faster you go, the more your mass increases, the slower time is experienced. I'm sure scientists have already considered this and moved on, but it just occurred to me that maybe dark energy - which scientists believe is responsible for not only the expansion of the universe but also its increasing rate of expansion - is not actually a separate energy or force at all but an effect of gravity or the lack of gravity. If gravity slows the passage of time, then time must pass fastest where there is the least matter. This would be between galaxies and between galactic clusters or even deeper in space. It seems to me that the expansion of the big bang would slow where gravity is strongest due the clustering of mass in matter and would be fastest in the vast universal emptiness. Beyond the mass clusters (including dark matter) space would expand at a rate that would increase as the distance from the mass increased. Dark matter seems to work to hold together these clusters, a basic level of non-interactive mass like a web upon which the more active forms of mass collect into islands past which rush the universal emptiness. The emptiness between the parts of the mass clusters  grow, but the slowing of the expansion by gravity keeps everything within the tolerance of the forces binding matter together.

Just a thought.