Dark Matter Speculation
Matter distorts spacetime to create gravity. What if, to view things from the opposite perspective, the distortion of space spontaneously creates matter, and a minor distortion of space, not strong enough to create matter is that which we know of as dark matter. A distortion threshold would be needed, beyond which matter would spontaneously form. As matter is a form of energy that can spontaneously form energy then it seems logical that all energy distorts space to some extent but it only forms into matter beyond a certain threshold. This could be detected by shining two parallel lasers in a vacuum, not powerful enough to form virtual matter particles, which would slightly converge... although if the convergence was due to spatial distortion it might remain undetectable at all but vast scales because any local detection method would also be distorted.