Our Perception of the Speed of Time Recently there has been some talk about time flowing at a different rate for some people. Some scientists claim when time seems to be going faster as we age. Probably one of the biggest mysteries we will ever encounter is time. Years ago, it seemed to be a simple idea. Time moved at the same speed for all of us, we were born, aged and grew old then died. That sounds simple enough doesn’t it? It seemed so simple and there seemed to be examples all around us which proved this was true, you have to wonder why anyone even questioned it? If it wasn’t for the fact there are and have been some great thinkers among us it wouldn’t have been challenged at all. I saw where someone on the internet asked the question, “how fast does time travel.” He got a lot of snide remarks for his inquiry. While he was sincere with his question it seems to indicate he thinks time itself has a speed. I don’t know if scientists will actually find out one day if time does have a speed, but as I said I never thought they would find out some of us have time traveling faster for us than others. Some scientists claim the older you get the faster you travel in time. I wonder why we can’t see this with some people. Why wouldn’t we be able to see some old person eating soup twice as fast as we do or running down the sidewalk using their walker? I am not clear on this point. Einstein said the faster you got the slower time passes. Why isn’t this true if you are old. I ask this question because most old people are slower than young ones yet they are told time is passing faster for them. As many of us age each year that goes by seems to be going by faster. One author claimed time didn’t really speed up for old people, but the perception of it going faster was increasing. He reasoned the early years of our lives had many first-time events which made lasting impressions, but as we began to repeat them they weren’t as meaningful and this is why we felt time was speeding up. In a study taken in 2005 by two psychologists of 499 people ages from 14 to 94 years old, the psychologists found time seemed to flow about the same for everyone until you asked people 40 years or older if the decades moved faster. The older people had this perception but when asked about days, weeks or months they didn’t. The psychologists claim the more newer memories we create for a given event the longer it will seem in retrospect. They state the brain does not encode familiar experiences. For example, can person 40 years old or older remember every time he ate a candy bar? According to the psychologists this would be impossible. Some scientists believe the reason we think time is passing faster as we age has nothing to do with anything I have said so far. They believe it has to do with the construction of our brains. By the time we reach our late twenties our brains begin to lose neurons. As we age the loss increases. Some scientists think this accounts for the different way older people feel about the passage of time. It is believed we are losing seven to ten milliseconds of brain speed per decade once we reach 20 years old. This is one tenth of a second per decade. It is claimed this is why it takes older people longer to solve problems or answer questions. One does not see very many old people on quiz shows, especially ones where they have to push buttons or such to get the right to answer. Most of us used to feel a lot smarter than we do now. I include myself since I am a senior citizen. Many senior citizens also have this feeling, but some do not know why. They don’t realize what is happening to their brains. Some use the term “brain fog” to describe this feeling. It is quite normal for humans to have this happen to them and if we live long enough we will all experience it. It does make one wonder why thinking slower and moving slower can make time seem to move faster. Some other scientists compare our brains to computer memory. They claim the reason time seems to slow down for the elderly is the fact their brains are too full of facts. They claim the more facts in our heads (memories) the longer it takes to retrieve information. I think most of us have heard we have an internal clock. Some researchers claim it actually slows down as we age and this is what makes us feel like time is speeding up. Again, with the slowing and speeding up. After reading all the excuses for the feeling of time speeding up, I am not really convinced that any of the answers are entirely the correct ones. It might be a combination of several factors which make the elderly feel time is flowing faster or it might even be something which was never thought of. There is a theory our consciousness could come from outside our bodies. If this is the case perhaps nothing I have said is valid. It could be wherever our consciousness comes from might also be regulating our perception of time or actually speeding up or slowing time. It is hard to talk about things which seem so incredible and as time is going by we are hearing more about incredible things which might affect time and therefore affect us.
|
