Im totally not convinced by your ans.if you are one of those individuas who believes not in string theory what then do you believe in?string theory is a deep MATHEMATICAL consequence of GR & QM.the fact that it is currently impossible for us to carry out experiments pertaining the predictions...
Gravity & QM
lets return to the current theoritical physicists realm(string theory),according quantum mechanics we all know that space is not an empty vacuum but the soup of the so called virtual particles which are popping in &out of existence.hence string theory portrays particles as nothing...
time subset of gravity
Well,what is gravity 1st of all?G.R says it is the distortion of spacetime,hence the distortion of the entity "spacetime"causes time to slow down,but neither is time equivalent to gravity.but to its family(spacetime) plus its property which is the curvature of this family.
Arno penzias & Robert wilson are the two astronomers who are also nobel prize leureates detected the backround cosmic radiation,I don't think it was Prof HAWKING
If dark matter is a form of matter that doesn't cause the curvature of space-time,then in what sense is it ever capable of causing an interplay with gravity?