Miscellaneous desk
< July 31	<< Jul \| August \| Sep >>	August 2 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

August 1

Has time been going faster?

I'm still trying to comprehend how we're almost two-thirds done with the year. It's weird how I can remember my family and I celebrating New Year's back in the beginning of the year. Then I wondered, "Has time sped up since the pandemic?" TWOrantula^TM (enter the web) 20:28, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Once you're over the hill, time speeds up because you're headed downhill. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:42, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See Time perception. It speeds up with age. Modocc (talk) 21:59, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

While it's considered true that younger people perceive time as running slower and older people as faster, there are other factors that can occur that can make each perceive time differently regardless of age. One of the most common is the perception that time goes faster when you are engaged or busy, and that time slows down when you are unoccupied ("footloose and fancy-free"). All of this dovetails into what is known as the flow state. Recently, neurosurgeon Theodore H. Schwartz had a conversation with Terry Gross about his new book Gray Matters: A Biography of Brain Surgery. During this conversation (and this presumably is also discussed in the book) he talks about how a neurosurgeon conditions themselves to work during long, demanding surgeries that could take anywhere from 3-7 hours, and what a neurosurgeon has to do to maintain that kind of stamina and do their job. One of the things he talks about is getting into the flow state and being able to control their body. I'm bringing up this current example because the connection between flow states and time perception also plays a role that is less discussed. For example, we know that children are able to access flow states easier than adults. This might also go some way towards providing an explanation for age-related time perception. More interestingly, I think there's also sober, altered states of consciousness that lend additional insight, and there's some evidence that people can tap into this kind of state to slow their perception of time down. For example, people in emergency situations, people who meditate, people who play sports, can also see things happen in apparent slower motion. Traffic accident survivors, for example, will often report time slowing down when they experience or recall the accident. As for drugs, there's anecdotal evidence that throughout history, musicians, writers, and artists have used cannabis to slow down their perception of time. All that aside, in terms of objective measures of time, our article on Earth's rotation indicates that indeed, "time" is going faster. In 2022, "Earth's spin was completed in 1.59 milliseconds under 24 hours, setting a new record. Because of that trend, engineers worldwide are discussing a 'negative leap second' and other possible timekeeping measures." Viriditas (talk) 23:12, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]