Surely you have ever had the feeling that time flows in slow motion. This can happen in a variety of situations: from a car accident to a dropped plate in the kitchen. It is also a very common occurrence when you trip and fall. It seems to happen to everyone. However, why this happens has long remained a mystery to scientists.
The most common hypothesis in history was that time moves slowly during a dangerous situation, because in this way we can be more alert. Obviously, getting into a car accident is not as dangerous as dropping a plate, but our brains don’t differentiate. It simply detects that a troubling situation has arisen and gives us a little more time to put all our feelings into it.
It makes sense that this is not literal. Time is what it is. But if our perception changes, we can think faster. Now even if it were evolutionary reason What happens to us, there is another question that continues to bother scientists: does time flow more slowly during an incident or do we remember everything more slowly? a posteriori?
This question may seem unimportant, but it is important to understanding how our brains work. For this reason, in 2007, a group of scientists from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston decided to throw a group of volunteers from a height of 45 meters. Don’t worry, they put a net underneath them. Science is a rollercoaster of emotions, but not that much.
Free fall to understand why time moves in slow motion
To conduct the study, volunteers were dropped from a height of 45 meters. without any rope no restraint. They’ve reached speed more than 100 km/h and finally they got into the network, passed 3 seconds approximately. They knew they were not in danger, but their brains logically perceived this as a dangerous situation. When faced with such an experience, it is inevitable to feel fear.
The experiment was divided into two parts. On the one hand, they were asked to count how long they thought their own fall, as well as the fall of other volunteers, which they had witnessed as spectators, had lasted. Everyone understood that their fall lasted on average 36% more than his comrades, although it took them the same amount of time to fall.
The second part of the experiment was carried out during the fall itself. The volunteers wore watches with a stopwatch in which the numbers ticked very quickly. So much so that the human eye is unable to distinguish one from the other. However, if the brain’s perception of time slowed down a little, they would be able to distinguish some numbers from others. None of the volunteers were able to do this. Thus, the study authors concluded that when we remember this, it actually feels like time is passing in slow motion. a posteriori.
So why do we feel this way?
The hypothesis of these scientists, which other researchers agreed with in subsequent years, is that at the moment of tension the amygdala is overstimulated. This is an area of the brain that is associated, among other functions, with formation of memories. When this happens, many more memories are created from one event compared to another situation that would not be frightening. We remember everything so clearly that it seems as if more time has passed than it actually has. It continues to help us analyze the situation, not to avoid it at that moment, but to prevent it from happening to us again.
Sometimes when this happens to us, we feel like we’ve had time to think about a lot of things, but that’s just the way it is. we remember them better. We may think and do the same thing in a less frightening situation, but then we don’t remember it in as much detail. So no, time doesn’t move in slow motion. We just remember it very clearly. And this, although it may not seem like it, is very good for us.
Source: Hiper Textual
