According to a study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, time appeared to move five times slower just over a billion years after the Big Bang.
Scientists reported on Monday that time appeared to be five times slower in the early cosmos, for the first time using incredibly luminous cosmic objects called quasars as “clocks” to verify this bizarre phenomenon.
Einstein’s theory of relativity suggests that “we should see the distant universe run in slow motion
Because of the peculiar effect velocity has on the perception of time passing, our observations make it appear as if time moved slower when the Universe was a newborn.
At least, that’s how it appears to us from a distance of about 13 billion years. This is known as time dilation, and astrophysicist Geraint Lewis of the Australia’s University of Sydney and statistician Brendon Brewer of New Zealand discovered it for the first time in the early Universe by studying the fluctuations of bright galaxies known as quasar galaxies during the Cosmic Dawn.
As space is expanding, Einstein’s theory of relativity suggests that “we should see the distant universe run in slow motion,” according to Geraint Lewis, an astronomer at the University of Sydney and the principal author of a new study.
Previously, researchers utilized observations of extraordinarily luminous exploding stars called supernovas as cosmic clocks to demonstrate that time moved twice as slowly when the universe was half its current age.
This is known as the Doppler effect, and it may be felt here on Earth as well
The latest study employed even brighter quasars to look further back in time in the universe’s 13.8 billion-year existence.
They discovered that due to the accelerated expansion of the Universe, we witness those variations unfold at a rate five times slower than if they were occurring nearby.
It’s the most remote time dilation we’ve ever observed in action, and it solves multiple problems. It demonstrates that quasars are consistent with the effect across enormous gulfs of space-time, which indicates that they not only comply with the standard model of cosmology, but we can also account for time dilation in analyses of their behavior.
“Looking back to a time when the Universe was just over a billion years old, we see time appearing to flow five times slower,” Lewis said.
“If you were there, in this infant Universe, one second would seem like one second – but from our position, more than 12 billion years into the future, that early time appears to drag.”
Although it is difficult to observe in our daily lives, space and time are closely intertwined in the Universe. This is how we can witness the Universe’s accelerated expansion. Light at far greater distances extends as space expands, moving to longer, redder wavelengths as the source’s distance increases.
This is known as the Doppler effect, and it may be felt here on Earth as well. Consider how an ambulance siren appears to expand out as the ambulance pulls away from you.
The ambulance becomes a distant galaxy in this scenario, and the light is the siren. The emission is normal at the source, but from our perspective, it becomes all stretched out.
