Astronomers have recently used a new method to prove an important property of Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity: time dilation, according to which time slows down for objects moving at extremely high speeds.
Researchers from the University of Queensland analyzed data from 1,500 Type 1a supernovae from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) database. These supernovae have similar mass and luminosity, making them ideal for observing time warps. According to the results, the faster a supernova moves away from Earth, the greater the amount of time dilation it undergoes.
Geraint Lewis, from the University of Sydney, pointed out that Einstein was right again, and according to Ryan White, a researcher from the University of Queensland, this is the most accurate measurement of cosmic time dilation to date.
The study confirmed that time dilation is definitely true up to a redshift of at least 1.2, that is, until the universe is five billion years old. Previously, they tried to verify this phenomenon with the help of pulsars, but they are much rarer than supernovae, so the results were not precise enough.
Time dilation has interesting implications when studying data from the distant universe. For example, at a redshift of 2, i.e. for events that occurred 10 billion years ago, the time distortion can already reach a value of 3, meaning that physical and chemical processes occur three times slower than on Earth.
At a redshift of 10, which is 13.1 billion years ago, the time distortion is greater, and events that last only a month or two on Earth can last for years. This makes it harder to detect changes, such as the appearance of a new supernova, since the changes are spread over a longer period of time and appear slowly in the observable portion of the sky.
(We have reviewed the article on pcforum.hu)
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