2023-07-09 05:38:00
The theory of relativity posed by Albert Einstein predicts that because of the expansion of the Universe, “we should watch the distant Universe grow in slow motion”explains to AFP Geraint Lewis, astrophysicist at the University of Sydney and first author of the study published Monday in Nature Astronomy.
Researchers had used the observation of stars ending their life in explosion, supernovae, to show that time seemed to pass twice as slowly when the Universe was half its current age, which is 13.8 billions of years.
The new study uses quasars – a near-stellar source of radiation – which are incomparably brighter, to date back as far as a billion years following the birth of the Universe. Time seems to flow five times slower there, according to the study.
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Cosmological time dilation
“Everything seems to be running in slow motion” for the current observer, according to Prof. Lewis but “If I might magically transport you ten billion years ago to drop you near one of these quasars, and you looked at your stopwatch, everything would look normal”he explained. “A second would be a second”he added.
To measure the phenomenon, called cosmological time dilation, Professor Lewis and statistician from the New Zealand University of Auckland, Brendon Brewer, analyzed data from 190 quasars, collected over 20 years.
Quasars, galactic nuclei with a supermassive black hole at their center, are said to be the brightest and most energetic objects in the cosmos. What makes them “very practical beacons for mapping the Universe”according to Professor Lewis.
The difficulty was to make them into cosmic clocks as easy to use as supernovae. The latter provide a single but reliable signal over time.
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Quasars as time beacons
For quasars, the researchers achieved their goal thanks to a large number of data and recent progress in the statistical understanding of random events.
In this case, the researchers have succeeded in interpreting the multiple shocks that occur when the quasar’s black hole absorbs matter.
Prof. Lewis compared it to a firework display, in which the large sprays seem to explode randomly, but whose elements “shine then fade” according to a defined and regular time frame.
“We have stripped this fireworks show, and shown that quasars can also be used as time beacons of the early days of the Universe”‘, he said. And thus demonstrated that“Einstein is right once once more”.
Previous attempts to use quasars to measure the theory of cosmological time dilation had failed, and led to“strange suggestions”. Like that quasars were not as distant objects as observed. The new study “put things in their place”by showing that these objects also obey the laws of the Universe.
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