The Gravity of the situation

    I've been reading a huge amount of miscellaneous verbiage on the subject of gravity.  Is there a graviton? Is gravity such that it can travel? Are there, or can there be, gravity waves?  My head hurts.

    I'm going to suggest that Gravity is the result of the local topography/topology of the universe itself.  Follow me here.  If the Universe were to be empty, and yet exist, (I know it can't "There is no space without field." [Albert Einstein]) but if it were to be, as a thought experiment.  The Surface could be thought of as 'flat'. that is it would be such that a photon would travel from one end to the other without deviation from a straight path.  If, then, you placed a single atom at its 'center', the entire surface would distort.  Equilibrium would have been disturbed and the distortion would continue asymptotically toward zero from the point of intersection of the atom.  Every object having mass would produce the same effect, with variations caused by the amount of mass.  A 'black hole' then becomes that place where the amount of mass is so great that the 'surface' is drawn into a single point.  I will not speculate on the nature of the space within the collapsed area, save to note that the neutrinos therein would be compressed, and, acting as a superfluid, would expand the space. Since the space is uniformly curved, gravity would not manifest and the matter therein would expand to fill the void.  

    Meanwhile, back in the 'Normal' universe, there would be a component of gravity which is invisible to normal measure, that being the action of the 'force' over interstellar distances, coming from the tiniest bit of matter.  Since the distortion is in one direction, gravity would only be 'positive', with all distortions additive.  The 'black hole' then becomes necessary to the existence of a galaxy, since it creates a 'pit' in which the stars rotate uniformly about the central depression.  The expansion of the Universe then becomes a case of 'point of observation' with the farthest objects moving faster than the nearer ones, since the light from them left millions, or billions, of years ago, at a time when the expansion was more rapid.  It would become necessary to examine space itself, to see if the expansion was accelerating or constant.  Dark Matter and energy would not be needed to support this model, inasmuch as the state of the Universe would be determined by a force of gravity much more powerful than is now supposed.  (orders of magnitude at least)  The explanation of why we measure gravity as we do would then relate to the dilation of time, an object falling within a gravity well would appear to fall normally, but to an objective observer it would fall much more rapidly.  The distortion of space then becomes exponentially greater, so that space is highly distorted, even in the most 'empty' of regions, because of the distortion which bands outward from every single bit of matter.  It would mean that any observation of the cosmos would have to be adjusted for the 'bend' in space/time, because light would follow myriad distortions on its way from there to here.  While juxtaposition would not vary, the entire view would be 'wrong', and distant objects might be in completely different locations.  Cosmology would have to be adjusted to compensate for this.  Astrophysics would need to reevaluate almost every premise based on distant observations.  

    Having given the matter some thought, I'll just leave the research on Gravity to those who are doing it.  The line of reasoning I followed caused more of a headache than they do.