A recently published paper in Nature claims that time in the early universe moved five times slower, proving Einstein's prediction on time dilation. The phenomenon was observed in quasars, which emit light that stretches as it travels through an expanding universe, causing time to appear slower. However, the claim that time moved five times slower in the early universe is not accurate, as time is relative to the observer's reference frame, and this phenomenon only affects the observation of time from a specific reference point.
1. A recently published paper in the journal Nature suggests that time in the early universe moved five times slower than it does now.
2. This result confirms a prediction made by Einstein over a century ago.
3. The stretching of the universe during this time has caused light itself to stretch, resulting in a process called redshifting.
4. This phenomenon, known as cosmological time dilation, means that things observed far away should move in slow motion.
5. Observations of supernova events hinted at this effect, but they are difficult to study, so researchers needed a better celestial clock to measure by.
6. They found this clock in quasars, which are extremely luminous and massive galactic structures believed to be powered by supermassive black holes.
7. Researchers from the University of Sydney measured 200 quasars over two decades of observations and found evidence of systematic redshift, indicating time dilation across the populations.
8. The observed shift in the furthest population of quasars from us corresponds to a redshift equivalent to a cosmological time dilation of 5x those vibrations of the earliest universe.
9. This result suggests that time is never moving at the same speed and that the passage of time we will see will stretch forever, eventually reaching a point where new information will never reach us.