If we can speed up time, we may be able to travel in time. Now scientists say they’re learning how to do it. If you find this confusing, you’re not alone: physicist Carlos Dolz says, ”A big problem for science is common sense. It works for most everything in people’s lives, but not in physics.”
Rafael Sangiovanni writes in the Miami Herald that physicist Dolz has managed to speed up time. In the past, atomic clocks on planes flying fast have been compared with the same kind of clocks on the ground to show that the clocks on the planes moved forward slightly more quickly. In his experiment, he puts a digital clock under immense force by spinning it on a centrifuge, in order to speed up the frequency of the pulses produced by the clock and push it ahead. It takes about six hours to move the clock ahead four seconds.
Sometimes time just SEEMS to go faster. Scientists have a theory about why time flies when you?re having fun, and drags when you?re bored. Brain scans show that patterns of activity in the brain change depending on how we focus on a task. If we?re concentrating on the time, instead of on the job itself, this triggers brain activity which makes time seem to go more slowly. If your brain is busy focusing on a task, then it doesn’t have enough resources to also pay attention to the time it takes, and the time seems to pass more quickly. Neuroscientist Tonmoy Sharma says this is because “?The same parts of the brain that are involved in motor function are also involved time perception.”
If you listen to Dreamland this weekend, you’ll find out that time travel really exists!
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