More on Time Travel

Building on the previous posting on the perception of time, if you're stuck in the present and nothing is happening, time creeps forward agonisingly      s  l  o  w  l  y. The very longest way to spend a minute is to stare at a watch as the seconds progress one by one. You have very little sensory input to occupy the brain, only your own thoughts. Your personal clock is hardly moving.Whereas if you're fully absorbed in an experience, driving a car over a treacherous mountain pass, or snorkelling over a coral reef, or trying to win a game of squash, all of your cognitive capacity is used up, and before you know it, hours have disappeared.

So the Catch-22 situation is that to stretch out your life so that it seems like an eternity, spend your time idle and unstimulated in the most tedious situations. Thinking back, you won't have regarded it as a long life, and childhood will seem so close. But if you fill your days with stimulating experiences, time will fly past, and in retrospect you'll feel as if you've lived a long and full life.  



Further reading: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6926500.stm