8 replies to this topic

[ExplorerAtHeart]

What if you could feel and behave in time differently, like for someone moving faster one hour would be like a whole day. For someone moving slower a whole year could be like a day it it. I would imagine an interstellar traveler or someone from a really cold place like titan would experience the latter. Time would move really slowly and single thoughts could take hours and actions days. mabe it could control this only only have slow reactions during a long voyages in the interstellar night. Whole years would pass like it was only a few days.

Imagine planets like titan. There are sure to be plenty of environments like it especially with the number of red dwarfs out there. If life were to develop on these its metabolism would probably move slower than us due to the lower amount of energy available. It may move really slowly and think really slowly but so does everything else in its environment.

Also as a side though experiment, life around a red dwarf would probably develop vision the infrared, since that what the majority of light a red dwarf gives off. If a titan like planet has a opaque atmosphere to visible light beings, the sky may still be visible to the natives cause they can see in infrared

[note i had a difficult time placing this is a section, i hope i chose correctly].

[Shimmy]

I was always under the impression the sensation of the passing of time is purely based around our brain activity. We only think time is passing because our brain is doing things basically. This sort of explains why when dreaming the passing of time seems very inconsistent because the brain activity slows down, and if for example you are in a state of extreme adrenaline or focus your brain will work harder fitting more thoughts and actions, in hence making time temporaraly (I really can't spell this word) seem to pass much slower).

So I guess people with mental deficiencies feel like time passes faster and super intelligent ultra evolved aliens would feel time passing much slower.

[Shimmy]

This creates the problem that after the singularity when we all become infinitely powerful computers able to process insane amounts of information every second, there will be the annoying side effect that time will slow down so much we will be almost unable to advance through it. And we won't actually feel any more intelligent than we did beforehand since our perception will be that we are still thinking at the same speed, but traffic lights will take about 70,000 years to change to green.

Anyway, if we did get invaded by aliens from a cold climate like you say, we'd just destroy them as it would take them half an hour to press a single button on their spacecannons.

[Craven]

Such slow metabolism wouldn't probably allow for emergence of awareness. Not in 13,7 billion years at least. After all we just popped up recently. Imagine how long it would take with such slow metabolism. local star would go nova earlier.

[ExplorerAtHeart]

Red dwarfs last for trillions of years though. Extremely long times.

[Craven]

Still I wouldn't get my hopes high. Such lifetimes are so long they would be comparable with changes in enviroiment. Evolution wouldn't be able to keep up.

[Zeitgeist123]

I used to have an impression that plants may be a complex moving organism with a different sense/perception of time. if you try to video a plant grow and have it fast-forward, it looks like its a moving tentacles/simple organism,, some people with asperger's claim that plants that die usually scream to their deaths, it turns out that it emits out a certain chemical when it dies.

disclaimer: this is just my personal impression. no peer-reviewed research has been done to back this up as this is not scientific but it may be worth observing about.

[Craven]

@Zeitgeist: on fast-forward they usually simply lean towards light, quite understandable process. As for emition of chemicals - it concerns only some plants, and it's very basic form of communication - hurt plant emits smell that makes other trees ready for possible damage. Cool thing, yet another example of how fuzzy some of our definitions are (like limiting communication to sophisticated animals).

Very nic short movie, appropriate for this topic

[ExplorerAtHeart]

^ Very nice movie!