Shortly after the Big Bang, time ran five times slower than it does today and everything happened in slow motion | Science

During the first billion years after the creation of the universe, time moved up to five times slower than it does today. As a result, everything seemed to be slowing down compared to now, say scientists in the authoritative scientific journal natural astronomy.

A team of astronomers was able to go back in time by examining the light around a quasar. A quasar is a supermassive black hole, with enormous luminosity of light. They are located at the center of galaxies.

Because not even light can escape the gravitational pull of a quasar, scientists can see light billions of years old. The universe was born nearly 14 billion years ago with the big bang.

But scientists could look so far back that they could see the universe a billion years after it was created. There they saw that time then moved five times slower than it does today.

“It’s like watching a movie in slow motion,” says astronomer and research director Geraint Lewis. “All the phenomena we see were five times slower when the universe was only a billion years old.”

Because the universe continues to expand, time also passes much faster. This was already affirmed a hundred years ago by Albert Einstein in his theory of relativity. This is the first time astronomers have actually seen it.