What is Digg?109 Comments
- thidranki, on 10/12/2007, -4/+58thats because you only looked outside of the clock. try listening outside of the music, then you'll hear it stop!
- Mudcrutch, on 10/12/2007, -1/+36would you all quit stopping time please. I'm trying to get some work done and all these pauses are annoying.
thanks. - candiru, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21wow this guy is really trying to make us think we can stop time by looking at a clock?!?!
proof of it being illusion: i was listening to music at the same time and the music never paused the same time i "saw" the second hand pause. - TheKillDoctor, on 10/12/2007, -7/+23The best way to stop time is find a very high cliff, jump off, after hitting the bottom time will have stopped. Other than that I know how to make a penny disappear.
- bonlebon, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14STOP HAMMERTIME
- Boondoggle, on 10/12/2007, -6/+17he left out the part about taking LSD before trying it.
- duxor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12A fun optical illusion, but as candiru said, nothing else is effected and so the idea of it actually being anything but an illusion is wrecked. If it really worked then you could also do it with a normal ticking clock, but the movement on that is easier to spot and so the trick would never work. Interesting how the brain tricks you into thinking that the second hand carried on from where you thought it stopped moving though.
- MightyGiant, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14Does it work with digital clocks?
- jeffness, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11a very good setup for an optical illusion. very few optical illusions actually make up a story like this, very cute. the reason behind this optical illusion is our blind spot caused by the optic nerve bundle at the back of our retina. there is actually a place in each eye ball that you cannot see anything! the brain makes up for our blind spot by seemlessly incorporating data from the other eye in our perception of reality.
the brain is cool like that, thanks buddy.
this page is a better technical explanation
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/blindspot1.html - Zuwiki, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12Fun to play around with but has nothing to do with quantum physics or relativity.
- jguy584, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11This is taken from the book What the bleep do we know
The movie version of this book is what that double slit experiment video was from
Unfortunelty the book is based on half truths and is based on very many unproven things, take this with a grain of salt
Here is a link to more info about the wierdo behind all this what the bleep do we know stuff
http://skepdic.com/channel.html - Midnightbrewer, on 11/05/2007, -0/+8I can do you one better. Last night, I laid down, closed my eyes, relaxed, and BAM! Next thing I know I've moved eight hours into the future and it's already morning! Felt a bit groggy, though, and I need a cup of coffee. Side effects of time travel, I suppose. I may go practice again after breakfast (although I don't seem to be able to jump as far during the day.)
- solarpowered, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Pseudoscience crap.
It's called "foveal vision".
There's a way your brain compensates for it, and it involves complex processing (that's what your vision center of your brain is busy doing, "fixing" what you see).
Who cares if the compensation makes it look like the second hand is stopped? The fact that it "starts up" again from the same place implies to me that some vision is "buffered" to compensate for the foveal blind spot.
Proof? How about a conjecture instead? How about that it only works for a few seconds (while the second hand is in the foveal vision area) and never more, which shows it's related to a quirk of biology. If it lasted more than a second, I'd be really impressed.
Hey, let's use some strict standards here about what we believe. Get sucked in on too much crap, and we may as well just pack up and move back to the Dark Ages.
We're where we are today because of the rigors of the "scientific method", which is cool unless you actually wanted to die at age 35 from a bacterial infection. - jtms1200, on 10/12/2007, -7/+14READ before you DIGG!
- twinklyJesus, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11I've stopped time and broken something. Nothing is moving!
No, wait, windows just crashed... everyone in the room was so stunned they just stopped and stared.
My bad... sorry. - sdpalmer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Wouldn't it be just as effective to change the gravitational constant of the universe than submit to this trickery? SHEESH! You humans!
- Cerberus047, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9time to exploit this and stop time to peek in the girls shower room!!!
- dave_colorado, on 10/12/2007, -6/+12When you're riding in a time machine way far into the future, don't stick your elbow out the window, or it'll turn into a fossil.
- clharlem149, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7go to your profile, find the story, and then click undigg
- pavelich, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8how do you undigg something. this is like saying "How to Make the World Disappear" and then you click the link and then is says close your eyes
- jackel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I have noticed this in the past. Of course it is not really stopping time with your mind, that breaks so many laws it is not worth mentioning. It seems that it is more of an individual perception of time. e.g. replace the clock with a teapot and you get the idea. The concept of time passing slower when one is concentrating deeply is generally accepted. It is still a fun game to play. In my experience, you can really stretch out a second quite a bit through concentration.
- pyromithrandir, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Of course they'll still be in sync! We stopped time, not just the clock!
;) - alecks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Better yet, try taking some LSD then tell me what you think about time.... (tee hee, shhhhhh!!)
- diagonalfish, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5An optical illusion but a clever one. You can actually convince yourself that it's working if you can look far enough away from the clock. :)
- 7of7, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I read a story on Newscientist or somewhere about how our brain momentarily displays imagery for an extra bit of time as a way to maintain fluidity. I wish I could find that article again.
- Paperclip1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Time to try out the new 'inaccurate' rating.
- chuckmo, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7i didn't make it very far down the page. my eye's started to bleed from the poor color choice =)
- awa1ct, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3optical illusion... I too was/am listening to music and watching tv while trying it.
time didnt stand still for a second, nor did my TV stop either :p - alecks, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7Even though this may be a optical effect, I still believe there is some truth to what he's trying to point out. I really think our perception of time has a direct correlation to our consciousness... ever feel like 5 min just went by way to fast or slow.... i think we actually distort time within our consciousness for that brief period of time, but as soon as we look at anything external, like any clock, we sync back up with the global consciousness' time. Even the global one is changing... anyone feel like time has been going much faster these last few years??
I think it's time we start opening ourselves more to the possibility that our minds and consciousness' can do a lot more than we realize. - solarpowered, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Actually, I could swear time slowed down while I waited for this page to load (all 400K of it).
- MalDON, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4My eyes hurt. bright green on black. Could it get any worse? Oh, Red background and dayglow yellow.
- b3owolf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3No, our school is so poor the clock batteries haven't been changed since the conception of alkaline battery. I think this is just messing with our perception of time. It kinda just lags your brain
- jmonw, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I know how to make a few thousand dollars disappear...
- spiralfive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Besides the fact this is just an optical illusion (which I could not re-produce), how would we even know if time stopped? Wouldn't we stop also? I mean, it would seem entirely seamless to us (based on what I think). It'd be like pressing the pause button on your DVD player: everything would stop. Everything. Then, once you press play everything is as it was before.
- crapiolio, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'll try that on my math test next week.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6Hmmm, what is interesting, to me, is that if you really put some effort into it you can stop it for a long time. Then when you look at it it isn't like it jumps 45 seconds ahead--it picks up where it left off.
Dismiss it if you will but that IS kinda strange. I had never seen this before. - OsakaWilson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2There is a phenomenon called tachypsychia, in which time appears to slow to a crawl. The mind measures time in 'thought units', When our thinking speeds up, as when we are in a dangerous situation (combat) or in a state of relaxed focus (meditation, yoga), time as we perceive it in the external environment slows down relative to the processing speed of our brain (how many thought units have passed). Car accidents appearing to happen in slow motion, etc. Top ranked batters have said that they have the ability to slow down the ball. I have heard that Army virtual reality combat simulations actually slow down the action and produce a kind of tunnel vision and reduced hearing acuity because these are all physiological changes that take place when soldiers are fighting. It is clear that a large variation in our perception of time is possible. I became interested in tachypsychia after experiencing it myself and wondered what was going on.
This could be part of what is happening with the clock.
However, we often underestimate the degree that our brain is filling in the blanks of what we see, and not always accurately. That this only happens when we are not looking directly at it, suggests that it could very likely be an optical illusion in which the brain just decided that such minute movement taking place in the periphery is not important enough to maintain accuracy.
Either one, or both are all plausible reasons for what we perceive. For something so far outside of experience as 'stopping time', the burden of proof is on anyone who suggests this is why its happening. Occham's razor and all...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachypsychia (not such a complete entry) - chess007, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"a very good setup for an optical illusion. very few optical illusions actually make up a story like this, very cute. the reason behind this optical illusion is our blind spot caused by the optic nerve bundle at the back of our retina. there is actually a place in each eye ball that you cannot see anything! the brain makes up for our blind spot by seemlessly incorporating data from the other eye in our perception of reality."
That concept was in a very interesting X-Files episode.
Want to travel through time? I know how! Are you prepared to travel through time at the standard speed of time? Then...
Get up and take a watch with you...walk around for 5 minutes. Sit back down. You have just traveled a little over 5 minutes forward in time! (lol) - Alef, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Illusion: yes, blind spot: hardly. For that you would have to cover one eye (since one sees where the other is blind), and at a normal viewing distance from the screen it would lie roughly 10 cm away from the clock.
- seventoes, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Yes, young grasshoppa. You must listen outside the music
- Werdock, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3But music doesn't seem to stop with that anyway.
- Zephyrspecial, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2That's pretty cool - I had seen it with a ticking second hand years ago, but never tried it with a sweeping second hand.
- simpleid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm curious what would happen if two people sat next to each other while looking at this, one attempting to stop the second hand and one not, and then at the end they mark where they see the second hand. Wouldn't it technically never be the same for the two of them again?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1if you notice carefully, the second hand speeds up for a moment, when the hand starts moving. Your wonderful brain is just filling in the missing frames of information. The ability to trick our brain is one of it's greatest traits, it helps us fill up gaps in our information and allows us to reconise things very easily.
- bsoric, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1There's a writeup on Everything2 along the lines of "By the time you are 10, half your life is over". I won't post the link, as the site's going slow enough already.
- OOTay, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1cool optical illusion but passing it off as it being true, well that's just lying...
- Dufresne, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm not saying that time is actually stopping, but what you said is untrue, because time is relative, so you could stop time for yourself only.
- trogdoor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You say that a clock would still work because it is "only a mechanical representation of time" and somehow not linked to what you call "real time" whereas you seem to imply that the atomic clock is somehow transcendental and connected to "real time" so it would seem to stand still. I think you are misunderstanding the basic concept of relativity, that being that there is no one true measurement for anything other than the speed of light. Although three observers may measure the clock moving at a different speeds they would all be correct in their measurement. And even if it were an atomic clock all three observers would _still_ measure three different speeds. In fact actual experiments have been done with atomic clocks that were in sync, one of which stayed on earth and the other of which was sent into orbit. When both clocks were reunited the one which had stayed on earth was "behind" in time relative to the other because of the effect of earths gravity. In the end both clocks measured two different times, both were in the same place at the same speed (after being reunited) and both were right despite being contradictory. It is crazy to wrap your mind around at first but actually makes a lot of sense within the context of other examples.
- 404notfound, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1That's not quite what's happening. You might be doing it wrong, since the explanation was a little fuzzy anyway; it took me a while to understand what you're supposed to do.
The trick of it is that the second hand is located in a part of your sight such that as you see it with your peripheral vision it will appear to stutter and skip, pausing briefly every few seconds. The illusion is the result of your brain compensating for the lack of data. It fills in the blanks imperfectly, causing the second hand to do what it appears to be doing. -
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