Can Time Slow Down? 444
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Does time slow down when you are in a traffic accident or other life threatening crisis like Neo dodging bullets in slow-motion in The Matrix? To find out, researchers developed a perceptual chronometer where numbers flickered on the screen of a watch-like unit. The scientists adjusted the speed at which the numbers flickered until it was too fast for the subjects to see. Then subjects were put in a Suspended Catch Air Device, a controlled free-fall system in which 'divers' are dropped backwards off a platform 150 feet up and land safely in a net. Subjects were asked to read the numbers on the perceptual chronometer as they fell [video]. The bottom line: While subjects could read numbers presented at normal speeds during the free-fall, they could not read them at faster-than-normal speeds. 'We discovered that people are not like Neo in The Matrix,' Eagleman said. 'The answer to the paradox is that time estimation and memory are intertwined: the volunteers merely thought the fall took a longer time in retrospect'."
A more interesting question (Score:3, Interesting)
What would be the problem with metric time for example?
Time doesn't slow down but our perception does? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A more interesting question (Score:5, Interesting)
Time distortion is a hypnotic phenomena (Score:5, Interesting)
What usually happens is that the boring minutes seem to drag, and the pleasurable moments pass too quickly. One can use hypnosis/etc to switch this around, so that boring hours can seem to pass in minutes, and the good times seem to last forever. Bandler addresses this in his Design Human Engineering [designhuma...eering.com] system. Milton Erickson, M.D. (psychiatrist who specialized in fixing people with hypnosis) also used time distortion in his work, iirc (and was the original inspiration for much of the NLP founders' developments). Any good book on hypnotic phenomena should cover time distortion too...
Re:A more interesting question (Score:3, Interesting)
What I mean is something like this:
By the way do the 12 months in a year have anything to do with the 12 hours in a day?
Only proved tachypsyche is not cognitive (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Slow down?!? What?!? (Score:4, Interesting)
My favorite theory about that:
at age 5, 1 year = 1/5 of your life
at age 15, 1 year = 1/15 of your life
at age 40, 1 year = 1/40 of your life
and in our heads we measure time relative to our lives.
Well, I like it, so it's true.
Somewhat flawed study (Score:2, Interesting)
What I think actually happens is that the mind starts working faster. Sort of like increasing the sampling rate. But your perception of time doesn't change, so things appear to happen more slowly. But until they remove that element of safety, it won't be a reasonably valid study. At least not ethically anyway.
Re:Newsflash. (Score:5, Interesting)
Bad experiment proves nothing (Score:2, Interesting)
Time does indeed slow down, just like in the movies. I've experienced it, and you can do all the bedly designed experiments you want to prove that salt is sweet, but it doesn't alter the fact that salt is salty and I know it.
I wrote about the experience [kuro5hin.org] at K5 a few years ago, if you want more details.
If you put a bullet in your brain, you will be in intense, searing, unimaginably horrible pain for the rest of your life. Nike's ad agency is full of morons; Just don't do it.
-mcgrew
A shocking result (Score:5, Interesting)
The first time, I was attacked by a soccer hooligan, who smashed a bottle on my head with no warning, from behind. I remember turning round and seeing the thug waving the broken bottle - but everything had gone into slow motion. I could literally read every move he was going to make and counter it, with no apparent effort on my part, matrix-style. After I'd disposed of his bottle, I threw him around, then I played with him a bit without hurting him (much). I had the sense that I was far back, watching it all.
Afterwards, I was quite shocked at what had happened - I am not a fighter, I am really quite a wimp. Thinking about it later, it made sense to me, that some kind of fight-or-flight instinct had kicked in, allowing me to react instinctually much faster than normal, with my normal consciousness somewhat suspended.
The second time it happened, I was in a car that went into a 360 spin down a hill, eventually crashing into a lamp-post, totalling the car. Again, I felt calm, I could see everything that was happening as if in slow motion, but there wasn't anything I could do, so unlike the fight situation, I can't judge whether this perception had any practical effect.
I find it interesting that you can't count numbers any faster in threatening situations - but I would wager that only certain, survival oriented abilities are accelerated in threatening situations. I wouldn't have been surprised if the ability to read numbers was actually worse in those situations! More research is clearly needed...
Re:Seconded... (Score:5, Interesting)
About 15 years ago my friend Rick and I were out deer hunting and both of us got big deer (Missouri corn fed ones) and we were hauling them out of the valley on a 4 wheeler. They were tied on the front carrier.
There is one point where the edge of the bedrock stick out and it is always wet and icy in that vicinity. I told Rick that we better walk the 4-wheeler out in this area but he is one of those large barrel chested men with mammoth arms and he just put his hand on the front of the 4 wheeler and held the front down as i was cautiously driving up the steep slope. I had gone about 15 feet when he slipped on the ice and let go and the 4 wheeler immediately flipped backward throwing me down 15 feet onto my back with a 4 wheeler and an additional 450 lbs of deer tied on falling toward me.
Suddenly everything moved in very slow motion as it came towards me ( just as you experienced with your shot) and I merely lifted my legs up and positioned them and had plenty of time to catch the 4 wheeler's seat with my legs and toss it about 20 feet away.
To my perception all of this took about 10 seconds to accomplish. To Rick's eyes it happened in a flash and he could not comprehend how my reflexes were so quick... in reality they were not. I simply was on a different timeline than he during that moment.
I agree that Time is only a perception.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
What they test was weather you can read numbers faster during high-adrenaline moments. That does NOT test how fast you perceive time to pass. The maximum speed with which you can read numbers flashing by is dependent on multiple things:
1) The speed and method the eye itself uses to capture "frames" of image data.
2) The speed of any low-level image "pre-processing" that may occur outside of the brain (i.e.: in the eye or the nerve centers near it). I don't know that this happens, but our sense of touch definitely does (reflex responses) and we definitely blink in response to objects approaching our eyes. If pre-processing does occur, this would occur before passing the information on for higher-level analysis by the brain.
3) The speed at which the brain is processing the data.
The experiment shows that the slowest of these three steps doesn't get faster during times of fear.
I've had the time-distortion experience. I remember thinking "whoa..." at the time because it seemed to take forever. I wonder if crisis speeds the thought process so that we can better think through the situation. The "overclocking" makes everything seem slower. However, that isn't the same as time being relative -- I can't move faster and I can't take in data faster. I can just THINK faster for a brief period of time. That's not a cure-all, but it's still an advantage in an emergency.
Re:Newsflash. (Score:5, Interesting)
The speed of light in a vacuum may be constant, but once other effects start getting involved the picture changes. I think this was an interesting experiment, though I'd like to see it repeated under the same and different conditions. You can't prove anything scientifically unless the experiment is repeatable (by other people).
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
I expect this experiment is spot on and here's why. Knowing things are going to be ok sitting on your ass in front of a PC is one thing. Seeing someone pull a pin out of a carabineer and watching that platform race away from you at 1 G of acceleration is fucking terrifying. When I bungee jumped, forward was fun. I did a nice swan dive and tucked the cable between my legs for the bounce back. Going backwards scared the shit out of me. I screamed like a little girl and felt the muscels around my collar bone twinge in a way that hurt me to my ribs, I pawed the air in front of me felt like everything in the universe was deeply deeply wrong. I could see the cable attaching me to the bridge but the thought of the rock I could not see behind me was more powerful. In this experiment the cut the rope for all intents and purposes, and I think that would be out of this world terrifying.
Now if you don't think the good neuro transmitters kicked in give them a dose of DMT before they go. But then they might not be able to read for all the self replicating machine elves.
Re:Newsflash. (Score:3, Interesting)
So modding him "troll" or "idiot" would be appropriate.
Re:A shocking result (Score:5, Interesting)
Happened to me, too. I was in the passenger seat of a car when I noticed a flare lying on a stretch of dark highway. My friend, the driver, hadn't noticed it. I was wondering what the heck it was doing there when all of a sudden, ahead in the car's headlights, I saw something in the road.
What went through my head next was something like: "Oh man this isn't going to be good am I going to die now? I better have my seatbelt on at least yes I do that's good then too bad it's only a lap belt I'm probably going to hit the dashboard man that thing looks like it's made out of reinforced steel that's going to hurt I wonder if I should try to brace myself on something ahh I'm involuntarily turning my head does that make me a wimp? anyway oh well I guess I've done everything I can do to get ready it's been a pretty good run here goes nothing."
A split-second later our '72 Chevy Nova smashed straight through two cars, which had been parallel-parked across the two fast lanes of the freeway, at 65mph. (The driver had never seen the cars, either -- I think he maybe should have been wearing glasses.) We tore the two cars in half -- ripped their backs off and kept going -- blew out all four of our own tires, and yes I did indeed smash my face up against the steel reinforcement of the dashboard. Other than that, we were fine. I peeled my baseball hat off the shattered glass of the windshield and we got out of there, moments before another car smashed into the back of our wreckage at speed and turned the Nova into a crumpled-up cube.
All I could think was: "Cooooooolll."
The church never said it was flat! (Score:5, Interesting)
Two monks did, though. Very convenient that they did, because it gave a man with an axe to grind (whether it was against religion in general or the Vatican in particular) a way to discredit the Catholic Church.
Read Late Birth of a Flat Earth, one of the essays in Stephen Jay Gould's book Dinosaur in a Haystack. I'll not spoil the story for you by quoting any more than this: the supposed Dark and Medieval consensus for a flat earth - is entirely mythological.
(One thing missing from the article. No seafaring nation could ever have believed that the world was flat. Ships fall below the horizon. Distant lands fall below the horizon. Any sailor afraid of "falling off" would be ... well ... a farmer.(
HAL.
Re:That was never "obvious". (Score:2, Interesting)
That said, the Catholic Church later censored Copernicus because of certain passages that it interpreted literally that seemed to conflict with his model (the one I remember offhand is about the sun being held in place for a certain period of time...)
Re:Film at 11 - but Fox made it, so... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
DMT is responsible for dream states, so DMT altering a potential memory isn't that far-fetched. Now, tell me this, how do you explain the lack of real time compensation when there are people out thre that in a huge brawl just weave their way thru EVERYONE and still kick the shit out of their target? (Witnessed this at a club in Memphis, guy goes nuts, crowd goes nuts and flees, guy going nuts just slips effortlessly thru the mob-mentality crowd without being knocked over and smashes a Hennessey bottle right into the offending party's head after wading thru about a thousand people, drunk as fuck, without being knocked over? Actually, better example. I've done Muay Thai for several years, and one year was professional (that was a big mistake, in retrospect,) and I'm not joking, when you get in the ring, it's either you see the move in slow motion and react, or you just don't see it at all and your ass is flat on the mat with a countdown ringing above your head. Seriously - read a book named "Nanotime" and ponder that book upon completion. You'll see the lines and connections drawn match up pretty well with the "Life flashes before my eyes" people.
Re:Seconded... (Score:3, Interesting)
When we all recovered enough to take a look, the front reflector bracket of the bike had driven into the tree like a nail, the front wheel egg shaped, the forks bent back 6 inches and the rear wheel in the air up off the ground. It took two of us to rip the bike reflector out of the tree it was in so deep. I had that fork for a few years, and still have the chain. I wore in like a necklace long before it was cool. We used to joke that it was the same way if I had wrestled a bear or wolf I would have worn the teeth or claws. I never did figure out how I managed to go over, around or through that hemlock, but that will have to be a question for more advanced temporal physicists. I should have taken it full in the face, and can't figure out from my roll and trajectory how I could have gone to either side of it. And if you don't believe me, I took my wife there hiking several years later and there was still bits of plastic reflector stuck in the tree.
Re:Newsflash. (Score:1, Interesting)