It sounds weird, but you are living in the past.
The brain doesn’t work instantaneously. It takes some time for the photons that carry the world we see to transfer their information to the back of our brains. During the time it takes for the chemical click and the neurons to fire, you aren’t really living in the present — it’s passing you by. The only way to get closer to perceiving the present, it turns out, is to run really, really fast.
In the premiere episode of Nerdist’s new weekly science show, Because Science, I explain how the comic book superhero The Flash would be the only person truly living in the now. If his brain couldn’t process information much more quickly — almost instantaneously — his super speed would be for naught, as he would slam into a wall before his neurons told him to stop. With a functionally infinite frame rate, The Flash’s brain samples more from the stream of life than any one.
In Because Science, I’ll be traversing the geeky intersection of science and pop culture every Thursday. And I want to hear from you! You can always find me in the drift, @Sci_Phile.
So does the Flash (and other speedsters) voluntarily shut down his ability to perceive time that quickly when he doesn’t need to?
That’s the idea!
That, and he is immune to harmful radiation in the electromagnetic spectrum. As he runs the speed of light, light waves that would be ordinary color for us, would become compressed. This is known as the Doppler Effect. Essentially the compression of him going against the light turns them into gamma rays due to how fast he is hitting them. So unless he is the hulk, the Flash is dead or immune.
NASA even thought about this when they were doing their designs for a faster than light travel ship. Their solution; a light shield. Basically as the ship speeds up it creates a gamma shield in front of them and cancels out the gamma incoming in a process known as interference.
Gotta love science.
That was great! Looking forward to more!! Sharing!
I like these! MORE! Also Kyle is adorable.
“If you could perceive the world in that speed, even light would appear frozen to you.”
Perception would be impossible if light appeared frozen. Sound waves could also not be perceived. So moving at the speed of an attosecond would essentially be a void, no?
At that speed you would see sound as a ripple or a wave, sound would look like a flash as well because sound is a force traveling at the speed of sound (slower than the speed of light) but seeing everything would be frozen but as he would slow down everything would start moving and then he would only need to move slow enough to see the intended path of time.