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Comments: 2 +-   Can Time Slow Down? on Wednesday December 12 2007, @09:01AM Ponca City, We Love You

Submitted by Ponca City, We Love You on Wednesday December 12 2007, @09:01AM
matrix
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. "It's the scariest thing I have ever done," said Dr. David Eagleman. "I knew it was perfectly safe, and I also knew that it would be the perfect way to make people feel as though an event took much longer than it actually did." 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,""
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  • I'm reading Eifelheim, a book by Michael Flynn, which is having a discussion on the speed of light and of time, stating that as the universe expands, the speed of light must slow down. I don't know if the discussion is a convenient fiction or based in hard science, but it isn't the first time I've heard that the expanding universe is changing things like Planck's constant.

    It made me think of the recent story that the reference meter no longer measures a meter (as defined by the speed of light version of th
  • Thanks a lot -- time USED to slow down in accidents until someone had to go and test it.
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