David Thomson's answer to What exactly is space-time? Is it something we can touch? How does it bend and interact with mass? - Quora

I answered a question on Quora about how space-time interacts with matter.

If you want to know what space-time is from your human perspective, it is basically whatever you want it to be. From our human perspective, space can mean volume, vacuum, emptiness, privacy, and on and on. Similarly, time can be thought of as a trajectory from past to future, numbers from a clock, duration, life, and on and on. Space and time from our human perspective is all about perception. At our macro scale of existence, there is nothing absolute about space, time, or space-time.

At the quantum scale of existence, things are different. If you hold two magnets, one in each hand, and move them close to each other, you experience the effects of Aether manifested as magnetic fields. Aether has a quantum state, which is in physics, a quantum rotating magnetic field with the property of 2-spin. Aether exists as a five dimensional manifold with three dimensions of length and two dimensions of frequency (it also has dimensions of mass, charge, and curvature). The three dimensions of length come from the surface of the double-sphere (or double loxodrome, depending whether we are looking at its electrostatic structure or its magnetic structure) Aether unit and the distance between Aether units. In other words, space as we experience it is the condition created by adjacent, curved, quantum surfaces.

Matter begins when an Aether unit absorbs a string of mass (dark matter) to create a subatomic particle such as an electron or proton. Subatomic particles have half-spin, which means the particle is determined by the quadrant of the Aether unit that absorbs the dark matter. The only difference between empty space (Aether) and matter is that matter is an Aether unit with an absorbed string of mass. The structures of matter, and of empty Aether units, are the same, which is why matter can interact with space.

The spatial-temporal structure of the Aether unit is five-dimensional space-resonance. Resonance is frequency squared. The two frequencies of the Aether unit are forward/backward time, and right/left temporal spin. Subatomic particles, however, are half-spin structures and therefore have the effect of rectified forward/backward time (forward time in our world), and rectified right/left temporal spin (left spin in our world). The rectifying-nature of matter creates the subatomic particle’s spin in “forward time,” but the “backward time” mode is missing. Also the rectifying-nature of matter creates the condition where left temporal spin exists, but the right temporal spin mode is missing. The process is similar to rectified AC current that makes pulsed DC current, except that it applies to temporal existence.

While the subatomic particles see only space and forward time (we ignore the left spin component in our macro world because we can’t exist simultaneously with anti-matter), the Aether that it resides in continues to see its forward/backward time behavior. When time moves an equal portion forward and backward, it creates the “present.” The present is always right here and right now. In fact, our material world, despite its subatomic particles always advancing in rectified forward time, ever only exists in the present. Time is thus an illusion caused by the half-spin matter of electrons and protons. The present moment is caused by the Aether, and the illusion of time is created by the matter within it.

So how does space-time bend and interact with mass? Go back to the two magnets in your hand. The Aether units that give us space-resonance are connected magnetically, electrostatically, and gravitationally to subatomic particles, which are really just more Aether units, but which have absorbed a string of mass (dark matter absorbed by the Aether becomes visible matter). When subatomic particles such as electrons and protons bind into neutrons, atoms, molecules, cells, crystals, and other complex forms, these complex forms are still connected to the Aether. The protons, neutrons, and electrons of the magnets in your hand are dominantly magnetically aligned such that the adjacent empty Aether units continue the magnetic alignments and create magnetic fields in space. Thus matter is interacting with Aether, and space-time is a subset of the Aether that we choose to see. For a more in-depth and mathematical treatment of this discussion, you can read Secrets of the Aether, which is available free online.