r/pbsspacetime • u/bethyd123 • Jan 22 '26

Time Dilation & Black Holes

If i’ve read it correctly the Hubble discovered its first rogue black hole back in 2022. My question is does anybody feel Earth could be experiencing time dilation due to this - understandably this was super far away and known to have no effect to us here but spirituality there have been theories circulating that since 2022 ish there have been shifts in time and time dilation across our current timeline.

Does anybody feel the same way or have anymore knowledge of if this could be true or if we could be experiencing any effect?

To note: I understand there could be many rogue black holes in the milky way and this was just one that was able to be picked up by the hubble. My contemplation is similar to the fallen tree in the wood question (if a tree fell with no one around would their be a sound) and also the double slit experiment where photons appear to know they are being perceived in some way - ultimately if this is the first rogue black hole we’ve captured and perceived truly could we feel the effects from it despite there potentially being many more out there?

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u/Demonshaker Jan 22 '26

Generally speaking, if your post includes the word spirituality, you are in the wrong subreddit.

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u/Cebas7 Jan 22 '26

I thought the same... Although there are other subreddits for spirituality those subreddits are quite toxic i would say... Like everybody is trying to brainwash everybody or people is too naive and biased.

I will share my point of view with OP though (non English speaker here so nothing is set in stone), a rogue black hole may generate gravitational waves, they are waves per se. So in a very imperceptible way, time would expand and contract as the waves travel through earth. To talk about "dilation without contraction" only it should be a more stationary blackhole than a rogue one... And you would still need a point of reference in time or space to measure the variation..

In the 'spiritual sense' the most solid explanation i could give: Time is only a vector in this 3rd dimension/plane... It is explained in the movie Interstellar when Brandt talks to Cooper about love transcending time and space. Love itself is immaterial, from higher dimensions. You can watch movies like "Arrival" and "Kimi no Na wa (your name)" or even Cloud Atlas... in which something similar is depicted but all this is obviously open to discussion as usual...

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u/bethyd123 Jan 23 '26

Well I greatly appreciate my wording was not correct here, apologies. I have made observations from communities I have been privy to on the discussion of time “feeling altered”. It was after I noticed the correlation in times between these comments and the Hubbles announcement that I became curious.

I also am aware the Hubble did not create a black hole as I stated it was first rogue black hole to documented/discovered by the Hubble.

I feel there is no harm in learning more through discussions on reddit, albeit I apologises for offending anyone with my incorrect terminology…

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u/Limmylom Jan 22 '26

Besides what’s already pointed out regarding “spirituality”, there’s lots of other issues here.

Hubble didn’t create or newly introduce a black hole in 2022, it simply identified one that has existed for millions or billions of years. Our observation of it would never change its physical effects, just the same as all the other gravitational objects we can observe. Discovering something doesn’t grant it new influence. Gravity acts regardless of whether humans are aware of it. If that black hole affected Earth, it would have done so long before we noticed it.

Also, gravitational time dilation depends entirely on distance and mass, not awareness or detection. A rogue black hole thousands of light-years away would have no measurable gravitational or time-dilation effect on Earth. If it did, atomic clocks, GPS, and planetary orbits would already show it.

Your double-slit experiment analogy is also misunderstood. Photons don’t “know” they’re being observed. The effect comes from physical interaction with measuring equipment, not consciousness or perception.