Spacetime: The Consequence of Misidentifying Clock Time with Physical Time

This paper shows that proper time and clock time in relativity have been identified with real time—an identification that has contributed to persistent conceptual difficulties at the foundations of physics for over a century. It further shows that what is conventionally interpreted as the temporal aspect of spacetime curvature may instead represent the influence of gravitation on local physical processes and the resulting slowing of clock rates, rather than the curvature of real time itself.