A few moments ago, I was strapped into a harness and winched 150 feet into the air. Four massive steel girders support my weight, and I can see that I’m the highest object around for miles. I am about to become the fastest-moving man in science, and I can barely keep my breakfast down.This contraption is called the Suspended Catch Air Device, but the folks at the Zero Gravity Thrill Amusement Park in Dallas prefer the more colloquial “Nothin’ But Net.” That’s because when the operator releases my rope, I will fall, untethered, until I plop into a modified circus net. The terrifying free fall will last less than three seconds, but to me it will feel much longer. And in this experiment, that is exactly the point.The study of how the brain perceives the passage of time is no longer just the work of philosophers. In the past few decades, medical scanners and computers have improved such that scientists can monitor the brain’s activity millisecond by millisecond. Sorting out how the brain handles time-related information could reveal the cause of several mental illnesses. But some basic information still eludes researchers, in particular an explanation for “time dilation,” the notion that time seems to slow during life-threatening situations. My impending fall is the latest in a series of experiments designed by David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, to crack this nut.Attached to my wrist is a perceptual chronometer, basically two LED screens, each blinking random digits between 1 and 9. Before I was hoisted up here, the chronometer was set so that the numbers alternate just fast enough that I cannot read them. If Eagleman is correct, and the brain’s perception of time slows down during disaster, then I should see the numbers on the chronometer flicker in a readable slow-mo, sort of like how characters in The Matrix films see bullets. That is, if I can keep my eyes open.
I just added a software upgrade to my Mac, and for the Nth time was suckered into one of my reluctant pastimes: staring at that progress bar. Yet it turns out that with a trick or two, that icon can make time seem like its flying.We've got Chris Harrison, a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University and an expert in human-computer interaction, to thank for this little gem: According to Chris, with the slightest bunch of graphical tweaks, a download progress bar can be made to seem like it's moving 10% faster than it actually is. It's like a little optical timewarp, right on your desktop.Chris set up an experiment with different designed download bars, each with slightly varied graphics but each lasting precisely five seconds. He then got volunteers to ogle the differing displays and indicate which ones they thought were shorted--in other words, he got them to reveal which display best cheated their brain's vision and temporal centers into thinking it was actually proceeding faster through time than it really took.Jumping off some previous research that suggests rhythmic effects can distort a viewers perception of time, Harrison's team tried animating the progress bars differently: Some had plain color, others pulsated and swapped between pale and dark blue regularly, others had pulsating bands that sped either to the left or to the right. (video after the link)
