2023-07-05 06:00:17
This is a first in astrophysics: scientists have been able to observe the time of the young Universe passing in slow motion, thus revealing one of Einstein’s predictions.
Illustration of an accretion disk in ULAS J1120+0641, a very distant quasar powered by a supermassive black hole a mass two billion times that of the Sun.
Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
According to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the time of the ancient and distant Universe should be perceived as flowing more slowly than today. However, observation (Observation is the action of attentive follow-up of phenomena, without the will to them…) at such a distance was hitherto not feasible. Scientists have overcome this technological limitation by using quasars as “clocks”.
The study’s lead author, Professor Geraint Lewis, from the University of Sydney, says: “Looking way back in time, when the Universe was just over a billion (One Billion (1,000,000,000) is the natural number that follows nine hundred…) years, we see time passing five times more slowly”. “If you were here, in this nascent universe, a second would feel like a second. But from our position, more than 12 billion years in the future, that span seems like an eternity.”
Professor Geraint Lewis and his collaborator, Dr. Brendon Brewer, of the University of Auckland (Auckland) [ˈɔːklənd]), located in the North Island in…), used the data (In information technology (IT), a datum is a basic description, often…) of nearly 200 quasars – hyperactive supermassive black holes at the centers of the first galaxies (Galaxies is a quarterly French magazine devoted to science fiction. With…) – to analyze this dilation (Dilation is the expansion of the volume of a body caused by its heating ,…) temporal.
Short explanation of time dilation according to the age of the Universe
Astronomers had already observed slightly slowed time for the Universe when it was regarding half its current age thanks to supernovae – huge starbursts – used as “standard clocks”. But supernovae, although extremely bright, are difficult to observe at the distances necessary to peer into the very young Universe.
The observation of quasars has made it possible to trace this timeline back to only one tenth of the current age of the Universe, confirming that the time of this one seems to accelerate with its age.
Professor Geraint Lewis at the Sydney Institute of Astronomy (Astronomy is the science of observing the stars, seeking to explain…) in the School of Physics (Physics (from the Greek φυσις, nature ) is etymologically the…) of the University of Sydney.
Credit: University of Sydney
Professors Lewis and Brewer examined the details of 190 quasars observed over two decades. By combining observations made at different wavelengths – green light, red light and infrared (Infrared (IR) radiation is electromagnetic radiation of one wavelength…) – they were able to standardize the “tic- tac” of each quasar. They discovered the expansion of the Universe imprinted on each quasar “tick-tock”.
These results thus confirm Einstein’s vision of an expanding Universe, but contrast with previous studies which had failed to identify the time dilation of distant quasars.
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