...time goes slower for the inner (shorter) path...
Well - but did we ever measure the time here? Isn't such reasoning of reality based on relativity itself, thus being a circular reasoning?
...AWT explanation for lensing. Can you point me to a link...
Indeed, you can read about it
here, for example..
... I think AWT will only help people to intuitively see the overall connectivity ...
The situation was quite similar at the time of heliocentric model introduction. The geocentric model enable to compute nearly anything, what the astrologist and astronomers needed for predictions of path of planets, the dates of conjunctions and solar or lunar eclipses.
Heliocentric model was useless for practical purposes in the times of Galileo. Astronomers didn't know the gravitational constant (it was measured first in 1798). They didn't know about mass of planets, so whole centuries the heliocentric model was useless for science computations. Everything what the heliocentric model was able to do was just a explanation of some sparse observations of subtle phenomena: order of Venus phases, some crater shadows on the Moon. It's apparent, heliocentric model was useless for science, so many scientists have refuted it by the same way, like Holy Church.
Does it mean, heliocentric model is insignificant? If yes, why we don't learn about geocentric model and epicycles by now? Epicycles and deferents were much more useful for formal theories of Galileo time.
...until you can find a way of expressing AWT mathematically...
You can model AWT mathematically in approximate way - but it's targeted to computer simulations, not for some formal math games, being particle model of reality. I can say as well, until string theory is not able to compute some observable quantities, the science has no reason to bother with it.
But it does so for last forty years! And AWT is only two years old. You can believe me, you would be very disappointed by state of string theory in 1970 - only few mathematicians did knew about it that time.
