Travel near a supermassive black hole and see how much time passes back on Earth.
1.12 years
for a distant observer
Title: Black Hole Time Dilation | Description: An introduction to the mind-bending concept of gravitational time dilation near a black hole, inspired by science fiction.
In the cosmic horror-movie that is a close encounter with a black hole, the most terrifying monster isn't a tentacled beast, but a force even more fundamental: **gravity**. According to Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, massive objects bend the fabric of space-time. The closer you get to an object with immense gravity—like a black hole—the more space-time is warped, causing time to slow down for you relative to someone far away.
This is the essence of **gravitational time dilation**. From your perspective on your spaceship, time feels perfectly normal. You'd eat, sleep, and watch a movie at a regular pace. But for a distant friend back on Earth, your clock would appear to tick slower and slower as you get closer to the event horizon, the point of no return. You might spend a day near the black hole, only to return to find that a hundred years have passed for everyone else.
This phenomenon is not just a sci-fi plot device; it's a real consequence of physics. While our calculator is a simplified model, it demonstrates why a journey near a black hole would be a one-way trip, not just for your body, but for your place in the universe's timeline.
This is a simplified, educational tool based on the Schwarzschild metric and does not account for the complexities of a rotating black hole, orbital mechanics, or tidal forces. The effects are purely theoretical and for demonstration purposes.