Close Menu
Technology Mag

    Subscribe to Updates

    Get the latest creative news from FooBar about art, design and business.

    What's Hot

    Bose’s compact TV Speaker is more than $100 off right now

    August 23, 2025

    What’s on your desk, Dominic Preston?

    August 23, 2025

    I Can’t Stop Playing Duolingo Chess

    August 23, 2025
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
    Subscribe
    Technology Mag
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram YouTube
    • Home
    • News
    • Business
    • Games
    • Gear
    • Reviews
    • Science
    • Security
    • Trending
    • Press Release
    Technology Mag
    Home » Is the Physics of Time Actually Changing?
    News

    Is the Physics of Time Actually Changing?

    News RoomBy News RoomSeptember 27, 20232 Mins Read
    Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Reddit WhatsApp Email

    Time is not to be trusted. This should come as news to no one.

    Yet recent times have left people feeling betrayed that the reliable metronome laying down the beat of their lives has, in a word, gone bonkers. Time sulked and slipped away, or slogged to a stop, rushing ahead or hanging back unaccountably; it no longer came in tidy lumps clearly clustered in well-defined categories: past, present, future.

    “Time doesn’t make sense anymore,” a redditor lately lamented. “It feels quicker. Days, weeks, months it’s going by at 2x speed.” Hundreds agreed—and blamed the pandemic.

    I’m surprised anyone is surprised. No one understands time. Time is a notorious trickster, evading the best efforts of scientists to pin it down for thousands of years. Psychologists call it a quagmire. Physicists say it’s a mess, hopeless, the ultimate terrorist. A failure of imagination. There’s nothing new about time being nuts.

    Intrigued by the pervasive sense of pandemic-induced time distortion, psychologists at first speculated that loss of temporal landmarks was at work: office, gym, pulling on of pants. Words such as “Blursday” crept into the vocabulary, along with “polycrisis” and “permacrisis,” referring to the plethora of perturbances creating instability, pushing time out of sync: war, climate, politics.

    Yet for all the newish research involving linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, scientists have made no real progress. We still know pretty much what we’ve always known: Scary movies and skydiving make time seem eternal, as does waiting for rewards (that call from the Nobel committee) or being bored (are we there yet?). In contrast, being happily immersed in some task (“flow”), facing deadlines, running for a bus, getting old, can make time run fast.

    Attempts to find a biological mechanism for time—a single stopwatch in the brain—have likewise gotten nowhere. Rather, the brain teems with timekeepers, tick-tocking at different rates, measuring milliseconds and decades, keeping track of breath, heartbeat, body movements, information from the senses, predictions for the future, memories.

    “There are thousands of possible intricate answers, all depending on what exactly scientists are asking,” explained one neuroscientist, sounding much like a physicist—that realm of science that routinely slices time into slivers of seconds, describes the universe a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after its birth, yet still doesn’t have clue how to think about it.

    Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit Email
    Previous ArticleWhy Aren’t Disabled Astronauts Exploring Space?
    Next Article Immersive Tech Obscures Reality. AI Will Threaten It

    Related Posts

    Bose’s compact TV Speaker is more than $100 off right now

    August 23, 2025

    What’s on your desk, Dominic Preston?

    August 23, 2025

    Will Trump help 4Chan escape the UK’s Online Safety Act?

    August 23, 2025

    Microsoft tests letting you resume Android apps on Windows 11

    August 22, 2025

    Abxylute will actually sell Intel and Tencent’s gigantic glasses-free 3D handheld

    August 22, 2025

    The power shift inside OpenAI

    August 22, 2025
    Our Picks

    What’s on your desk, Dominic Preston?

    August 23, 2025

    I Can’t Stop Playing Duolingo Chess

    August 23, 2025

    Gear News of the Week: Always-Recording Smart Glasses, and Google Teases a New Nest Speaker

    August 23, 2025

    The PlayStation 5 Is About to Get More Expensive

    August 23, 2025
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Pinterest
    • Instagram
    • YouTube
    • Vimeo
    Don't Miss
    Reviews

    The Fairphone 6 no longer feels like a compromise (except in the US)

    By News RoomAugust 23, 2025

    The Fairphone 6 arrives almost two years after the 5, a testament to the company’s…

    Will Trump help 4Chan escape the UK’s Online Safety Act?

    August 23, 2025

    FEMA Now Requires Disaster Victims to Have an Email Address

    August 23, 2025

    At This Point, It’s Impossible to Know What the Trump Phone Looks Like

    August 23, 2025
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram Pinterest
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of use
    • Advertise
    • Contact
    © 2025 Technology Mag. All Rights Reserved.

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.