Astronomers have peered back to the dawn of the cosmos to observe time ticking five times more slowly in the early universe than it does now — finally proving a prediction that Albert Einstein made more than a century ago.
Researchers spotted the extreme slow-motion effect in data taken from bright cosmic beacons known as quasars dating to when the universe was just 1 billion years old — less than one-tenth its current age. The researchers published their findings July 3 in the journal Nature Astronomy.
“Looking back to a time when the universe was just over a billion years old, we see time appearing to flow five times slower,” lead author Geraint Lewis, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Sydney, said in a statement. “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.”
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