Our Perception of Time

[herme3]

To us, our lives do not appear to occur in an instant flash. Our lives also do not occur so slowly that everything appears to be frozen. What exactly causes our perception of the rate in which something happens?

 

Imagine that you are watching a bird fly across the sky in an open field. It wouldn’t appear to happen in an instant flash. However, couldn’t it seem to happen instantly if your perception of all other events were at an equally higher rate? If you had a perception of the Earth’s rotation where the Sun appeared to move across the sky every few moments, the bird would move too quickly for you to notice it.

 

Is there a type of universal time force that causes everything to happen at the rate in which we see it happen? Or, are our minds like DVD players that read events and then play them at a speed in which we can comprehend?

[Klaynos]

I'm going to blame evolution for this, we need to be able to perceive events which are about the same speed as a predator can run at us...

[foodchain]

To us, our lives do not appear to occur in an instant flash. Our lives also do not occur so slowly that everything appears to be frozen. What exactly causes our perception of the rate in which something happens?

 

Imagine that you are watching a bird fly across the sky in an open field. It wouldn’t appear to happen in an instant flash. However, couldn’t it seem to happen instantly if your perception of all other events were at an equally higher rate? If you had a perception of the Earth’s rotation where the Sun appeared to move across the sky every few moments, the bird would move too quickly for you to notice it.

 

Is there a type of universal time force that causes everything to happen at the rate in which we see it happen? Or, are our minds like DVD players that read events and then play them at a speed in which we can comprehend?

 

I would have to agree with klaynos and say its an issue resulting from our biology, or biology/ecology.

[abskebabs]

I remember reading an interesting new scientist article that was on this same subject. Often we feel intiuitively that time passes at different rates according to the type and level of activity we are involved in. For example athletes often say they are "in the zone", and they seem to have more time even though time of course is passing at the same rate. There has just been some change in their perception of it.

 

In fact a lot of recent neurological research has been done on this area, and so here are a few links you may find useful:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg18925371.700

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/dn11080-how-long-is-a-splitsecond-its-all-relative.html

http://simon.lrdc.pitt.edu/~iccm/proceedings/papers/Taatgen.pdf

[herme3]

Oh, this reminds me of something strange that happened several months ago.

 

I was eating lunch in a restaurant and looking out the window at the busy highway. The cars were going by quickly, but then everything looked like it was freezing into frames. The cars actually looked like they stopped for a second, and I could see the details on the tires and everything. I felt a little dizzy for a moment, and then everything went back to normal.

 

I forgot this had happened, and I don't think I created a post about it here. Doesn't this sound strange?

[JohnF]

Perhaps it's a limit imposed by the size of our brains. The distance the information has to travel determines how we perceive time. Maybe in small animals the perception of time runs at a higher rate.

 

Your experience of time freezing could be a momentary glitch where information went to the wrong part of your brain; similar to what happens with Deja Vu.

[quan chi2]

What about light? Light has a speed and the way we percieve an image has a speed. Couldn't it just be the way our eyes are built?

[JohnF]

How about space. If a house fly had a system of measurement like ours then...

 

The sun would be 28,346,400,000 house fly miles away.

And 93,000,000 house fly miles would be about 305,118 of our miles.

 

I wonder how big space really is. Is there something out there that considers the Universe to be about a couple of feet from one side to the other

 

Calculations are based on a human of 6 foot tall compared to a house fly of 6 mm long being the inventors of each measurement system.