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Time Quirks: Perceived Time Flow Slowing, Stopping Or Speeding Up

Time Dilation

This happened about 4-5 years ago when out walking the dogs in the Thames Valley area of the UK near Reading.

I was walking along the edge of a field with the dogs off the leash having run on ahead. They started to jump up on a person about 150 yards away, I was looking at them not where I was going. I didn’t notice that the ground dipped away and my brain mis-registered where the ground was.

I started to fall, that is when the time dilation started. I suddenly went into very slow motion, although I was teetering on falling, time came to a stop. It allowed me to think how best I could readjust my body to fall without hurting myself too much. However I could not think of any way that I could change my position to prevent a bad fall, but I seemed to have quite a long time to think about it. To an observer I must have fallen down straightaway. I did fall quite badly and sprained my ankle which took weeks to heal.

Some time later I read a book about a NDE in which the author related a similar episode when he was parachuting, he nearly hit another sky diver in the air and had a similar slow down in his time He did manage to use the time to adjust his position, avoided hitting the other guy and prevented a bad, possibly fatal accident. NB this was not the NDE of the title of the book, (Proof of Heaven) which happened during an illness in hospital.

Time is a local variable under General Relativity but time dilation usually happens noticeably near large celestial objects or when travelling at relativistic speeds. However you could argue that relativity is happening all the time yet the effect is normally so slight that you do not notice it. Whether or not it had anything to do with relativity I don’t know but time dilation is permitted under the laws of physics.

Has anyone else had a similar experience. NB it has only happened once.
 
I doubt there's a relativistic effect here, you're simply not moving fast enough with respect to the earth for it to show up at all. That 'things appear to happen in slow motion' is a well documented and tends to happen in stressful situations, especially when they take you by surprise.

Also, your recall is not the same as your experience. It's more likely (I think) that everything happened in real time and your recall of it, even if only a moment or two afterwards, seems slower than real time as there was a lot of information there when it was 'played back'.
 
This kind of effect has happened to lots of people, and it has happened to me.
I think it's just your subjective experience of time that has changed, not time itself. This is probably due to adrenalin causing an almost instantaneous speed-up of heart rate and mental processes, allowing you to react to a dangerous situation.
 
Mythopoeika said:
I think it's just your subjective experience of time that has changed, not time itself. This is probably due to adrenalin causing an almost instantaneous speed-up of heart rate and mental processes, allowing you to react to a dangerous situation.
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There's a clear reason why evolution would select creatures that could speed up their thinking in times of crisis - it helps them survive the crisis and then breed! (Slower witted types would tend to drop out of the gene pool.)
 
I posted this on another forum and several people had the same experience, somebody falling or rather somersaulting over was observed to be in slow motion by onlookers. Another was in a car crashing and managed to pull a child in the vehicle from being thrown out the window and dodged an object coming at him at high speed which crashed through the back window. So this guy was working at high speed compared to the outside world.

I definitely experienced a slow down in my time compared to the norm, paradoxically enabling me to think faster than the rest of the world, the slow down also effected the laws of physics not just my perception as I could have moved limbs etc not possible in normal circumstances, maybe it was a speed up of my time but it sure didn't feel like it. I was frozen in time enabling me to perform manoeuvres that would be impossible in normal circumstances. Maybe my brain did in fact cause the time dilation as a local variable.
 
Coal said:
I doubt there's a relativistic effect here, you're simply not moving fast enough with respect to the earth for it to show up at all. That 'things appear to happen in slow motion' is a well documented and tends to happen in stressful situations, especially when they take you by surprise.

Also, your recall is not the same as your experience. It's more likely (I think) that everything happened in real time and your recall of it, even if only a moment or two afterwards, seems slower than real time as there was a lot of information there when it was 'played back'.
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The experience at the time was in slow time according to my clock along my world line, not my recall modifying anything in retrospect. Regarding relativity it does happen all the time but the effect is slight, even GPS is adjusted for relativity by microseconds.
 
drbates said:
Honestly - bullet time is purely internal, and also based on your recall of the event. If we were all effecting time there universe would be all over the place.
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The space twins paradox, for the faster travelling twin his clock does run slower and he ages less, moving clocks run slow - it has been proven by experiment.

Maybe the slow down in "my time" was in fact a slow down in the rest of the world's time.

I'm not saying that relativity in the sense that gravity and velocity do effect different experiences of time (your "proper" time) was necessarily at work here but the theory does allow for time dilation for objects relatively.
 
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drbates said:
Yeah but you're not moving fast enough to have any effect on how fast time is running.

More importantly neither astronaut is aware that time is running at a different speed for them.
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Relativistic effects I agree are not noticeable at slow speeds such as experienced on Earth but they are still there, GPS has to be adjusted for both special (velocity of satellites vs surface of Earth) and general (gravity) relativity, nearness to the centre of Earth's mass. Gravity slows down time, higher velocity also slows down time.
But time IS running differently for both astronauts as indicated by comparing their clocks which would show a different time.
I agree in my perception of time in this incident I was able to compare my experience with the "inertial frame of reference", not another astronaut.
I'm not saying that relativity is necessarily an explanation for my experience but the theory proves that time dilation is possible and it has been proven by experiment.
 
Richard Dale said:
The experience at the time was in slow time according to my clock along my world line, not my recall modifying anything in retrospect.
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Your experience as you describe it is wholly dependent on your recall of it. Hence it is only your recall we can go by or in fact you can go by.

Richard Dale said:
I'm not saying that relativity in the sense that gravity and velocity do effect different experiences of time (your "proper" time) was necessarily at work here but the theory does allow for time dilation for objects relatively.
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True. But for you brain to take account of the relativistic effects of 'falling over', it would have to have a better time resolution than an atomic clock, respectfully, I submit this is unlikely.
 
Coal said:
Your experience as you describe it is wholly dependent on your recall of it. Hence it is only your recall we can go by or in fact you can go by.



True. But for you brain to take account of the relativistic effects of 'falling over', it would have to have a better time resolution than an atomic clock, respectfully, I submit this is unlikely.
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I would say every object has a clock in it, this is my theory, also I did experience the time dilation and I don't know how my body detected/reacted to it, we make many unconscious calculations and judgements which are extremely complicated but we take for granted, e.g. every time we do anything, e.g. walking, driving etc.
 
drbates said:
It would also have to have an outside observer or a way of interrogating time outside the bubble.

An atomic clock on a jet fighter cannot KNOW it's running slow until it compares the time it thinks it is with other, unmoved atomic clocks.
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I compared my time experience with the inertial frame of reference, i.e. what was happening around me and to me.
 
Yes, but your time dilation went the wrong way. You were falling, so you were moving faster than the local frame of reference. Your time should have slowed down with respect to the rest of the world. From your point of view the rest of the world should have speeded up, and your fall should have been faster. When a muon hits the atmosphere it should decay before it hits the ground, but time dilation allows it to hit the ground because it 'sees' the atmosphere flash by more quickly in its own frame of reference.
 
Yes good point, I don't know whether I sped up or slowed down, it appeared that my own time slowed down (at least to me) which allowed me to take actions quicker than the rest of the world. No-one saw me so I don't know how I looked like to the rest of the world. I wasn't paying attention to the rest of the world so I couldn't tell whether it speeded up or not.
Paradoxically the "stretching" of my time maybe would have allowed me to do more in the time allotted had I been able to take advantage of it. Anyway I think we're getting somewhere in the explanation. Whether you believe it or not time "appeared" to slow down for me but maybe it was the opposite.

Your post is the most intuitive so far.......to me anyway...........
 
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(I'm sticking this here, mods. To avoid accusations of "there's already a thread". But maybe it should be somewhere else....

Time. Personal human perception thereof.

For me, the month of November 2016 has been one of the most interminable, grinding, stretched-out months of my life.

No idea why. And no, I'm not wanting Xmas any sooner than it has to be.

Has your November been a Neverender?
 
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Yes. I believe the build up to, and fall out of the US Election has provided an overkill of similar stories / news / reactions / hand-wringing etc - leading us to feel like we're experiencing the same thing over and over. I just had to check the date when I read your post - and yes, it's still bloody November!
 
mr_nic said:
...has provided an overkill of similar stories / news / reactions / hand-wringing etc - leading us to feel like we're experiencing the same thing over and over.
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Thank-you, exactly, there has been a marked 'groundhog day' effect over this whole five-week/30-day month.

I do not want Xmas to arrive, but I will (eventually) welcome December.
 
I think this year and the last have both flown past for me.
 
Mythopoeika said:
I think this year and the last have both flown past for me.
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I expect things will only speed up. When I was sixteen in 1986 I was really into Deep Purple and the stuff I was listening to was from around 1970. I was aware that it was old, a lifetime in fact. It seemed ancient.

Now, sixteen years ago seems like yesterday. I've been in the place I am now, with the same people for twenty plus years. Christmas is coming and I can barely remember the last one, they are all the same. We forget more Christmases than we can remember. A quick calculation tells me that if we arise at 8 am on Christmas morning and go to bed at 12 midnight, and also supposing we live to the Biblical average age of 70, then we can hope to enjoy 35 days of Christmas in our lifetimes.
 
davidplankton said:
supposing we live to the Biblical average age of 70, then we can hope to enjoy 35 days of Christmas in our lifetimes.
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Not quite seeing how we lose 50% of our days....or....do you mean we're only awake for 8hrs of these 24hr Xmas days?? No...thought I had it, but I don't.

Totally-agree about the overall rapidity of the years. It's horrific.

(ps Deep Purple....Santana....Crosby, Stills & Nash....Godley & Creme...the 70s were awesome)
 
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davidplankton said:
I expect things will only speed up. When I was sixteen in 1986 I was really into Deep Purple and the stuff I was listening to was from around 1970. I was aware that it was old, a lifetime in fact. It seemed ancient. ...
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Your reference to popular music made me recall an example of perceived time dilation from my own experience.

I was a precocious 13 as of 1964, when the whole 'British Invasion' phenomenon occurred in North America. Top 40 music became a rich context which (a) demanded my obsessive attentions and (b) changed on at least a weekly basis. For the remainder of that decade the progress of rock (etc.) served as a sort of measuring tape or ruler against which many memories were indexed. To the extent memory serves to support it, I can still trace out the (relative) series of events and story lines of that era as a pretty detailed historical narrative. At this point my experience changed, and my memories ratcheted forward, with a relatively fine-grained (e.g., weekly) granularity.

By the mid-1970's I was doing the 9-to-5 routine in between extended periods spent on the road as a full-time musician. By this time I was no longer tracking each new release (singles and albums alike), and the breadth of the rock / pop wavefront had self-divided into multiple stylistic streams. By this time I'd also chosen certain performers or styles as favorites whom I'd continue to track at the expense of paying attention to any others (especially newcomers to the scene). My ability to detail the ongoing progression began to diminish so as to cover only my favorites. My working knowledge at the time, as well as the eventual memories, shifted to a temporal granularity that spanned months.

By the end of the 1980's I was still listening to music as much as ever, but I couldn't readily tell you whose single that was or what that performer / group had done to date. It all became a big undifferentiated mess in my mind. By this point I could have a hard time placing songs / artists in any time slot smaller than an entire year. It had become a constantly-changing blur.

Now that I'm in my 60's ... I can still pretty accurately tell you when a 1960's-era single / album occurred down to a span of months (e.g., a season). If it's from the 1970's, I can only reliably do the same down to the granularity of a particular year.

If it's from the last 30 years, I'd be lucky to ascribe it to the right decade. :(

So here's my point ...

Even though we assume 'time' proceeds at a fixed pace, we will end up recalling it in memory. Memories are somehow crisper and clearer for events exhibiting two characteristics: (a) novelty and (b) impact (i.e., the degree to which one focuses upon or attends to them in the moment).

As we age, more and more events get blurred by a relative lack of novelty (i.e., they become routine in some sense). The first kiss is a lot more memorable than, say, the 50th.

This isn't limited to recalling events from the distant past. I've noticed that I have a harder and harder time remembering details from recent (including the same day's) experiences if those experiences are routine or just more examples of things that I've encountered many times before.

IMHO the perceived 'speed-up' effect as one ages has more to do with how memory works than any direct perception of time itself.
 
Time is all relative. Two minutes in a scalding hot bath will seem to pass much more slowly than two minutes in the arms of your lover. Personally this year seems to have passed much quicker for me than any other in my life. It feels like it was Christmas 2015 took place last week. So much has happened to me in 2016 but it feels as though the whole year has been compressed into just a few hours: it's a very odd thing. Yet I remember some days just dragging on and interminably on when I was at school (long ago now!), weeks seeming to last years and years seeming to last decades.
 
I think that neither "all in the mind" nor "relativistic physics" can explain this kind of event, with the solitary exception that Einstein's general theory began with his undermining the concept of absolute time and simultaneity. In other words, there is no way of showing that people are all experiencing the same time at once. However, when you consider the whole range of time-related anomalies, some other explanation would be needed, maybe a virtual reality/glitch in the matrix kind of theory. Certainly the most extreme time slip cases would require that kind of theory. Jenny Randles has a good case in her Time Storms (p.190) where a young boy escaped getting run over on a foggy day in 1963 London: the car seemed to slow down almost to a stop and a blue haze appeared between him and the vehicle. The horn was sounding and the driver was dead. The speedometer was stuck at 40mph. This freezing effect is rare but has been noted in the US and in Liverpool, where several witnesses saw a line of traffic stopped for several minutes, someone frozen in mid-step etc. There are no easy answers.
 
Carl Grove said:
I think that neither "all in the mind" nor "relativistic physics" can explain this kind of event, with the solitary exception that Einstein's general theory began with his undermining the concept of absolute time and simultaneity. In other words, there is no way of showing that people are all experiencing the same time at once. However, when you consider the whole range of time-related anomalies, some other explanation would be needed, maybe a virtual reality/glitch in the matrix kind of theory. Certainly the most extreme time slip cases would require that kind of theory. Jenny Randles has a good case in her Time Storms (p.190) where a young boy escaped getting run over on a foggy day in 1963 London: the car seemed to slow down almost to a stop and a blue haze appeared between him and the vehicle. The horn was sounding and the driver was dead. The speedometer was stuck at 40mph. This freezing effect is rare but has been noted in the US and in Liverpool, where several witnesses saw a line of traffic stopped for several minutes, someone frozen in mid-step etc. There are no easy answers.
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Yes thanks, well thought out point, FYI I posted this on another forum and got several other examples of the same phenomena from members of the forum, I have no reason to doubt the authenticity of the experiences. Time "froze" for them but they were able to perform double quick actions to get themselves and/or others out of trouble, and most of the events were injury or life threatening. There may also be a clue to an explanation in the fact that the events were life threatening. Not quite sure where this line of enquiry leads, can the mind change time events, they used to think that "observation" affected the outcome of quantum mechanics experiments. Or could it pertain to "afterlife" type explanations. I was surprised that so many people on the forum had experienced exactly the same phenomena, sometimes on 2 or 3 occasions. Perhaps I might have died as a result of the fall if I had hit my head on the stony hard ground although I thought at the time I wasn't able to do much about the fall. Several of the other experiences would definitely have led to death if preventative actions had not been taken.
 
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Richard Dale said:
Yes thanks, well thought out point, FYI I posted this on another forum and got several other examples of the same phenomena from members of the forum, I have no reason to doubt the authenticity of the experiences. Time "froze" for them but they were able to perform double quick actions to get themselves and/or others out of trouble, and most of the events were injury or life threatening. There may also be a clue to an explanation in the fact that the events were life threatening. Not quite sure where this line of enquiry leads, can the mind change time events, they used to think that "observation" affected the outcome of quantum mechanics experiments. Or could it pertain to "afterlife" type explanations. I was surprised that so many people on the forum had experienced exactly the same phenomena, sometimes on 2 or 3 occasions. Perhaps I might have died as a result of the fall if I had hit my head on the stony hard ground although I thought at the time I wasn't able to do much about the fall. Several of the other experiences would definitely have led to death if preventative actions had not been taken.
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Agreed, it seems that sometimes when we are about to get eliminated, some kind of override system starts to operate (it may be time slowing, it may be "angels" helping, it may seem miraculous) to keep us going. It seems to me that some kind of higher dimension is involved. By the way, there are a few cases in which people somehow avoid the inevitable and then experience the aftermath that would have ensued as observers rather than participants. It all reminds me of a computer car racing game where the player's car may get trashed but somehow it flips back upright and carries on..
 
I couldn't find where else to put this so please move if somewhere more appropriate.

I find my calculation of time when I need to get up early seems to go wrong. For example, on a Tuesday and Saturday I get up at 5.10 in the morning. I usually wake up around 4.30 and check the time on my phone. I re-check it convinced that at least 20 minutes have passed, to find that it is 4.33.

This never happens when I'm awake or when I have no specific time to get up.
 
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