I'm calling myself to provide evidence in support of this SPECIFIC statement, so nobody else needs to. I started thinking overnight that my "99.9%" level of assurance might be a bit high, with regard to space itself. So this morning I started searching -- and I was surprised that my searches mostly came up embarrassingly empty. Which I thought, and still think, is odd...
However, that said, I DID find a pretty authortative source which obliquely supports my statement:
http://einstein.stanford.edu/content/relativity/a11332.html
Special & General Relativity Questions and Answers
Can space exist by itself without matter or energy around?
No. Experiments continue to show that there is no 'space' that stands apart from space-time itself...no arena in which matter, energy and gravity operate which is not affected by matter, energy and gravity. General relativity tells us that what we call space is just another feature of the gravitational field of the universe, so space and space-time can and do not exist apart from the matter and energy that creates the gravitational field. This is not speculation, but sound observation.
I'm still bothered that I have not seen a good theory of HOW time and space (space-time) are specifically CREATED by gravity. Time is slowed by gravity. Space-time is BENT by gravity. But when I try to dig in on "CREATED", the above is the best I have found so far. If someone finds something further, or contrary, or importantly different, please bring it to my attention.
Okay?
Until then I am going to stick with what I laid out in my first post, except maybe lower the assurance from 99.9% to only 99%. Is that fair enough?