A fly's perception of time.

[Royston]

I remember watching a programme, where they stated that a fly experiences huge dilation of time. For example if you moved your hand slowly towards a fly it would percieve it as motionless. How is this possible ?

 

As humans, events can seem shorter...if we're enjoying ourselves, or longer...waiting for a bus for instance. We certainly don't see events visibly slow down. Is this just down to the speed visual information is being relayed to the fly, like high speed film ?

 

I keep on wondering if this has any implications towards relativity...if events are slower to one life form, how do they fit into the frame work of another...obviously they do, but it's kind of bugging me.

[danny8522003]

Im no expert on the subject but if i had to give an educated guess id say that the time an organism perceives is due to the speed of which the inputs are processed by it's brain.

 

For instance, if things are processed VERY fast like a fly it would make sense for it's conscious "clock" to slow down so it can make more decisions based on the information it is receiving.

 

Whereas a slower animal may process things very slowly and would therefore have a fast conscious "clock" and would have less time to make decisions because of long processing times.

 

I hope this makes sense because it found it difficult to get across what i mean, im sure it is decipherable though.

[Icheb]

I keep on wondering if this has any implications towards relativity...if events are slower to one life form, how do they fit into the frame work of another...obviously they do, but it's kind of bugging me.

Wtf would the perception of time to an animal have anything to do with relativity?

[H2SO4]

I think hes saying that we may have a wrong perception of time. Maybe what we think as being "time" is totaly distorted, and it is actualy faster to us. But maybe no animal has a real perception of time.

 

 

IDK, im just throwing in my 2 cents.

[jutntog1]

Icheb be nice, if you dont think its common sence id like to point out its also listed under edaquit take a look

 

http://scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=8730

 

"Don't Flame

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"Don't be Mean

If you don't agree with someone, don't attack them. Tell them politely why you think they're wrong, and give them evidence. Insulting people won't get you anywhere but suspended."

 

 

now on topic

 

i think he has a good point i dont think it would effect anything but its certainly intresting if we view events in an extreamily distorted way from other creatures it could make cross specise comunication very tricky... as in telling your dog to sit...i wonder if dogs have a dif perseption of time... or even if monkeys, im thinking very clearly of koko (however its spelled)....

[Royston]

Wtf would the perception of time to an animal have anything to do with relativity?

 

I was wondering if this has any implications to relativity...at which point did I say it did?

 

I'm going to google a few related topics, watch this space.

[Royston]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A3577241

 

Time perception has a lot to do with relativity. Obvious link I know, but it's an easy read.

[danny8522003]

I would say perception of time is irrelevant to relativity. No matter how long it takes you brain to "unravel" a second, it will still be a second according to a clock.

[Kyrisch]

I always wondered how one could ever make theories about time, seeing as our brains are the ones perceiving our world, and we don't know how much they distort our surroundings. I bet you didn't know that your brain slows down your perception of time every time you move your eyes to refocus on something. In reality, your eyesight is blurry while the lenses in your eye refocus, but you brain doesn't want your conscious mind to perceive this so it holds on to the moment before you moved your eyes and drags it into the space of time when your eyes are refocussing. When the image is clear once more, it snaps back to "real" time. Since our brain is constantly distorting our perception of our environment, how will we ever know how time works? In my opinion, it takes a higher life form to fully understand a lower one, so we will not ever be able to fully understand how our own minds work, and so we will never truly know what strange forces act upon us.

[Icheb]

Icheb be nice' date=' if you dont think its common sence id like to point out its also listed under edaquit take a look

 

http://scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=8730

 

"Don't Flame

Just because someone doesn't agree with you, doesn't mean you need to insult them. They can be ignorant, sure, but try not to flame them out of the forum. If they're intentionally insulting people, don't reply--just use the Report Post function to let the moderators know about it. They can deal with insult wars and rule-breakers a lot better than regular users"

 

 

"Don't be Mean

If you don't agree with someone, don't attack them. Tell them politely why you think they're wrong, and give them evidence. Insulting people won't get you anywhere but suspended."

Do all of us a favor and go sit in a corner and cry. Please.

[Daecon]

I think it's just the processing power of a fly's brain lets it do a lot more calculations faster, so it can react to things quicker.

 

Slow a fly's perceptions down to human speed and "time" would appear to be slower, too.

 

At least, that's my understanding.

[Walden]

Along with Kyrisch:

 

It's hard for me to grasp the concept of theories including "time" as well. I find myself always thinking that time was man-made. Sure, they related it to the earth's revolution around the sun, but to me it seems very arbitrary. They could have related it to almost anything that stays constant. Does anyone know what I mean?

[Kyrisch]

I understand fully, time could very well be an illusion created by the brain's system of documenting occurrances and pereceiving the world

[elfstone]

I understand fully, time could very well be an illusion created by the brain's system of documenting occurrances and pereceiving the world

 

I thought this was true once but since I learned about relativity I don't think it's valid anymore. If time was an illusion it would have to be absolute. Since relativity shows that time is a physical quantity that is depended on others that aren't illusions (space, motion), then it has to be real as well.

[Royston]

I would say perception of time is irrelevant to relativity. No matter how long it takes you brain to "unravel" a second, it will still be a second according to a clock.

 

If a fly was watching a clock the second hand will appear to be going slower.

 

I understand that relativity deals more with position rather than perception, e.g from the early observations of measuring the time it takes light to reach an observer you will always get readings that are relative to your position...common sense. And due to Pauli's exclusion theory this is true on an atomic level.

 

I just forgot that if events are indeed perceived slower then obviously the measurable increments of time are slower to the observer (when using a clock for reference). The 2nd law of thermal dynamics still holds so as I said in my first post it bears no consequence how time is perceived, I just found it interesting that something exists in the same framework but perceives events to be slower...relative to the observer.

[Royston]

Do all of us a favor and go sit in a corner and cry. Please.

 

Well that's a very constructive and thought provoking addition to the debate, a round of applause for Icheb.

[danny8522003]

If a fly was watching a clock the second hand will appear to be going slower.

I couldn't figure out whether that was in agreement or disagreement?

 

It would appear slower to the fly, but according to the Universe a second is still the amount of time that would have elapsed.

[Royston]

I couldn't figure out whether that was in agreement or disagreement?

 

Sorry Danny8522003, I was actually agreeing with you. I should of made that clearer.

 

I still think the debate relates with relativity, just as the opening paragraph on relativity describes...

 

The Theory of Relativity is the celebrated discovery of the physicist Albert Einstein. Originally, it was two theories: the Special Theory of Relativity came first in 1905 and states that the rate at which time passes is not the same all over the universe - it is dependent on the observer (in other words, it is relative). It is not hard to see that different people perceive the passing of time at a different rate to others: as we get older, less information is processed about our surroundings per second, so we perceive time to be going faster.

[danny8522003]

I understand what you mean but im not sure different perceptions, even if of time, should interfer with the physics that govern the Universe.

[Royston]

I understand what you mean but im not sure different perceptions, even if of time, should interfer with the physics that govern the Universe.

 

Fair comment and I agree, in hindsight the paragraph is a little misleading to what relativity proposes...it's really quite vague.

[Daecon]

It would appear slower to the fly' date=' but according to the Universe a second is still the amount of time that would have elapsed.[/quote']

I'm fairly certain that's correct. "One second's worth of time" has still passed, when regarding things from an absolute viewpoint.

 

Even if it feels like a minute for the fly, that's merely an relative perspective from the fly's mind.

 

One second is one second is one second, no matter how fast or slow you measure it; it's the exact amount of time it would take light to travel (whatever distance light will travel in 1 second).

[danny8522003]

Maybe when it was written it was sort of an example of what relativity was proposing so it could be understood? I think it was just giving an example of how different people perceive the passage of time, what do you think?

[Royston]

I'm fairly certain that's correct. "One second's worth of time" has still passed' date=' when regarding things from an absolute viewpoint.

 

Even if it feels like a minute for the fly, that's merely an relative perspective from the fly's mind.

 

One second is one second is one second, no matter how fast or slow you measure it; it's the exact amount of time it would take light to travel [i'](whatever distance light will travel in 1 second)[/i].

 

Light being our only constant to accurately measure time over distance.

 

Even if a fly perceived light to be travelling slower over a given distance it would still be relative to a fly's clock. (Obviously fly's don't see light slowed down, otherwise they'd be practically teleporting everywhere...or moving so fast that we couldn't see their movement.)

[Daecon]

(Obviously fly's don't see light slowed down, otherwise they'd be practically teleporting everywhere...or moving so fast that we couldn't see their movement.)

Ah, *puts on nature-progam narator voice*

 

"And here we have a specimen of the little-know order Diptera Temporalis, or the 'Time Fly'.

 

Time flies are tricky buggers, with the ability to jump back to a period before you managed to swat them..."

[danny8522003]

Hahahaha

 

Seriously though. If i fly were to measure the speed of light using an instrument it would indeed be constant and equal to c. It's not the light that changes speed, nor time; it's simply the conscience of the fly putting everything in a perspective that best suits the purpose. The speed of light can therefore not be judged by anything with a subjective view of the world but by equipment that can give cold hard factual data.