Time isn’t nearly as immutable as it first seems. Ask any astrophysicist, and they’ll likely regale you with mind-bending descriptions of gravity’s effect on space-time (i.e. the more massive the object, the slower time appears to travel around it). Some cosmologists even wonder if entire pockets of the universe—whether filled with galaxies or endless nothing—experience time at different rates.
However, the perception of the speed at which time passes can also vary within our minds. And it’s this mental realm that Steve Taylor—a psychologist at Leeds Beckett University—is exploring in a new paper and a new book called Time Expansion Experiences.
Taylor’s interest in these altered temporal moments—which he calls “time expansion experiences,” or TEEs—began when he and his wife were involved in a car crash back in 2014. “Everything went into slow motion,” Taylor describes in a post on the Leeds Beckett University website. “I looked behind, and the other cars seemed to be moving incredibly slowly, almost as if they were frozen. I felt as though I had a lot of time to observe the whole scene and to try to regain control of the car. I was surprised by how much detail I could perceive.”
Hellbound and Down 