Source
r/AskReddit•
Franetic

Is it possible that time is accelerating?

Is there any evidence to support the theory that time could be accelerating and that what we perceive as an hour today is less than what it was say 100 years ago?

I've always heard people say that time seems to move faster as you age and as I get older (I recently turned 45) I have to agree.

Not only are the years beginning to fly by, but people (and their pets) are living longer and looking younger. It's not uncommon for people to live to be 100 these days and most of my friends and I look 10 years younger than we are.

When I look at people who are in their late teens/ early 20's , they look like middle school children to me. At first I thought it was the way I perceived them as an older person but when I look at my High school year book, most students look much older than people in high school do today. And if I look at pictures of teenagers in the 1950's and prior, they look like 20/30 year olds.

This all makes me think that people aren't living any longer than they did a century ago but rather time as we perceive it is moving faster.

Thought's?

Posted Jun 23, 2012, 12:22 AM UTC

219
Hyraxo•

Are you high?

4
FraneticOP•

Maybe a little.

1
miscellaneousnope•

You're not supposed to tell anyone. Shhh.

2
CosmicMoggie•

The short answer is "no, time in the world you described is not accelerating". There is a very long answer but I really cannot be arsed explaining quantum physics here. Ordinary time might be perceived to accelerate as you get older but that's only because a fixed period of time constitutes a decreasing fraction of your life as you get older. For example, one year to a ten year old is 10 per cent of their life, but that same year is only 2.5 per cent of the life of a 40 year old.

2
FraneticOP•

I keep hearing people say that but i just can't seem to understand how the same amount of time (for instance a year) seems shorter just because you have less of them left.

1
CosmicMoggie•

It's because as you get older, a year decreases as a proportion of your life.

1
FraneticOP•

Yes I keep hearing this but I fail to see how time seems to go by faster just because you have less of it left. There has to be more to it than that.

1
JackRakkham•

you might be onto something actually, as time is perceived as "slowing down" the closer the observer is to the center of a body of mass due to gravitational time dilation. since the universe IS expanding and accelerating. and its collective mass is less concentrated. time at any internal point in it COULD be "speeding up" at an accelerating rate.

2
FraneticOP•

I believe you are posting to my reply to Herborist in regards to the rotation of earth around the sun. Thanks for the input.

1
[deleted]•

Time is relative. Your understanding of time is comical.

1
FraneticOP•

Time is relative. That's kind of my point. What we perceive as an hour is always the same. There's always 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year and one year is one rotation around the sun.

Now, just for fun say the universe is expanding and as a result the earth continues to move further away from the sun but at the same time accelerates to compensate for the extra distance it must travel, would that not effect time?

1
[deleted]•

Fail after fail after fail. Read a book.

1
FraneticOP•

Yes, well it's been over 25 years since I've been in a classroom and I've forgotten pretty much everything I learned that I don't use on a regular basis. I wish I had more time to read up on some things but there doesn't seem to be enough hours in a day anymore. That's kind of why I made this post in the first place. Thanks for the input though.

1
8bitAntelope•

My main thought is that Thoughts should not have an apostrophe in it.

My next thought is that yes, we are living longer and looking younger. We have modern medicine to thank for that. I read somewhere that every couple years we either add or remove (I don't remember) a fraction of a second to the year, but it was anecdotal and I don't really remember what it was. So, yeah. I agree with the other comments so far.

1
abg32•

I understand what you're talking about. It does seem that way, when I am in schools and see high school students they really do seem to look like middle school kids....but I think we must have looked this way too when we were in high school.....i do think it is all relative.

1
burnmooredankweed•

As we age, our perception of time changes. When you are 5, a year is 20% of your time alive, when you are 50, it's 2%. Subjectively, this seems to make time appear to move faster.

Yes I am high.

1
RealityIsMyReligion•

Time doesn't have a speed. The speed in which time passes is a creation of our mind. In fact, you perceive time differently based on various environmental and biological factors.

Relativisticly time can be dilated/distorted, but it cannot be "sped up" or "slowed down" in the traditional sense.

1
Trestomagnetic•

There's actually a theory that suggests time may be slowing and will eventually stop.

http://m.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/12/scientists-time/

1
pie_monster•

It's subjective. Your brain looks upon your life as one lump; therefore one year is less of a percentage of that lump with every passing year.

1
[deleted]•

[deleted]

1