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2 years ago in Physics By Charlessom

How does time dilation occur around black holes?

I grasp the concept of gravitational time dilation from the "clocks run slower in a gravitational well" analogy. But I want a slightly deeper, physically intuitive picture. What is it about the extreme curvature of spacetime near a black hole's event horizon that physically affects the rate of all processes? Is there a way to think about it beyond just the mathematical metric?

 

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By Divya Answered 2 years ago

Think of it through the lens of the equivalence principle: acceleration is locally indistinguishable from gravity. Now imagine a light clock: a photon bouncing between two mirrors. For a clock in a strong gravitational field (or accelerating), the photon must travel a longer, curved path between ticks from the perspective of a distant, inertial observer. Since the speed of light is constant, a longer path means a longer time between ticks time appears dilated. Near a black hole, spacetime is so severely curved that these paths are enormously stretched. This isn't a mechanical slowing but a fundamental property: the "fabric" of time itself is stretched thin in the gravitational well.

 

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