Ooohh... I found my new favorite forum. So I know I'm a newbie here, but I'd like to weigh in on a few things that I've been reading:

My understanding (without doing any real research at this moment to verify)-- Time is derived from the solar system and, more specifically, the rate and movement of Earth around the Sun, then broken down into smaller fragments. The speed of light is more a reference to distance than time (a light year is the <i>distance</i> traveled by light in one calendar year (aka one rotation of the earth around the sun).

Human perspective and understanding of time can be warped by certain circumstances. Our eyes compensate because we can't receive visual information as quickly as we'd like to, so our brain 'fills in' the gaps. It's the reason why when you glance quickly at a clock, the second hand sort of seems to hover there a bit longer than we think it should. Your brain is 'filling in' and assuming that the second hand must have been there previously, since it is there (after your eye as received the image-- or rather the LIGHT from the image -- and your brain has had time to process it) "now." I stumbled on a very interesting website that I nerded out to with my daughter one day.

I also know that smaller animals may experience a different perception of time than larger animals (like humans) do. I can't remember the exact reasoning behind it, but it was correlated (maybe not related) to heart rate (the smaller the animal, the more rapid the heart rate). If you apply this to events that are stressful and raise your adrenaline levels (which raises your heart rate), then it's makes some sense that your perception of time will be altered.

The idea behind time travel, is that <i>if</i> you could, say, run faster than the speed at which light travels, the light (aka 'images' received by the eye and processed by the brain) would be old (something you could have already experienced).

Of course! But potential answers are better than nothing.

What I is look for potential answers and even if I come up with more than one or two, even five, I have something to think about and chose from and explore the possibilities of.

I watched this video. Interesting, but it does not apply to my personal experience or explain it.

Adrenalin had no part in the experience at all in the near fatal accident event. I was just calmly driving down the road getting ready to make a left hand turn. No adrenalin.

Then, time appeared to stop. I saw flashes of the accident that was about to happen. I actually heard my own thoughts telling me that this was what was about to happen and that a vehicle was coming up on my left. I responded thinking (saying to myself) that I had looked in the rear view mirror. Then I heard my own voice/thoughts say "It won't hurt you to look over your shoulder."

It was as if a version of my future self was giving me advice. I agreed to look over my shoulder and that is when I returned to normal time..

That look over my shoulder took one second and it saved my life.

Still no adrenalin.

So the adrenalin explanation does not fly in this case.

Also from the video:

The experiment with the rats do show how certain drugs can speed up the normal thinking process a little.... but certainly not as much as I experienced.

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Okay as for seeing or knowing what will happen in the near future...

I think an actual future event is created at a certain point of intention to take an action. (Like a very short alternate reality.)

While driving, I intended to turn left at that instant. I had no intention of looking over my shoulder. I had looked in the rear view mirror. The result of that intention was inevitable. It had been created. It was the effect coming into fruition in space-time that was set in motion by certain causes, decisions and intentions.

Then at that instant I became aware of what was about to transpire.* My mind went into action to correct that error because I knew I was about to be killed. I created a mental picture of the accident and how it would have been experienced by me and flashed that picture very fast.

But it still does not explain how all of that, plus the conversations, (and visions) could have happened in a fraction of a second of real time.

My speculation is that it happened in a different kind of spacetime environment, because as our forum scientists claim, the completion of a thought, in this spacetime, does not happen that fast.


*How I became aware of what was about to transpire is another mystery.

If it's true that eyes can not process the images that we see very quickly, and what our brains don't necessarily understand or can't register, it 'fills in' for, then perhaps you don't consciously recall glancing up and seeing that truck coming toward you, but subconsciously, some part of your brain DID receive that image.

I'm thinking of deja vu here. When you feel very strongly that you've experienced an event previously, so much so that you feel you can predict the outcome, but in reality, you could just be "remembering" a dream that had stayed in your subconscious... or even creating it... a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, sts. Something can trigger the connection TO your conscious mind, but we are too simple to understand how or why.

Since you didn't 'consciously' see the threat, you wouldn't necessarily have felt fear or adrenaline, but it maybe could have been potentially 'traumatic' (even if not a registered/conscious trauma) that a part of you was compelled to act.

Our minds are really incredible. When my mother was in a motorcycle accident and was thrown off her bike into the median where she suffered a compound fracture to her femur, she was/seemed completely alert. In reality (of course) she was in shock. She has no memory of the event to this day. Her brain has locked it up because it was just too traumatic a memory (or so this is what I've read about traumatic events being repressed). I realize that this isn't quiet relevant to your situation, but I think it might be somehow related?

I think that it is very possible that our subconscious mind is aware of A LOT more than our conscious mind is, even things that are out of our vision or sensory range. (Like a sixth sense.)




Deja vu is another strange thing. I have experienced that many times. It is like remembering the present moment. I have also walked into a house or restaurant I have never been in before and yet I knew where all the rooms were. In this restaurant I knew there was a model train track and a train in there before it came around and asked the waitress: "Is there a train in here?" My date thought I was nuts.

..until the train came around.




I guess you could say that death is potentially traumatic.



Yep our minds are incredible.

Found this interesting, if slightly off topic.

That is interesting, and not really too much off topic.

Maybe what we consider to be the present is not what we think it is.

An event, being a cause and an effect, is like a story.

That is how I read the tarot cards. As a story. They read like stories. Sometimes they read the past, present and future.

But of course that's not science.

Events are the key I think. They are the key to time.

Welcome to the science forums. Hope you hang around and stir things up.

Great post, good to have you! I hope you stick around!

The fun thing about the maths of relativity, if you could move at the speed of light you would see all moments in time happen at once. Time would not move at all. If a beam of light could have a perception it would be of all reality happening in a single moment, or perhaps better said "without moments".

Makes sense? Not to me and I study this stuff! Fun!

. . and since then we have gathered much data that backs up this concept. 99% of the time our perception tracks very closely to "real time", and when this shifts it tends to be a rather dramatic experience.

Dan Dennet's book Consciousness Explained, used much of this original data to come to the various conclusions he reaches about consciousness and the brain.

Our memories can be erased and recreated, our experiences are sometimes generated before the event in question occurs, the anticipation of action so to speak. Evolutionarily speaking this was an advantage, to act early could mean life and death, a False positive rarely causes death when the reaction would save your life given a correct anticipation of a deadly event.