Time is one of the things we rely on in keeping track of our daily activities. But did you know that there are a lot more about it than we all had known? Here are some interesting facts about the time that you probably haven’t heard about:
- While in a standing position, time passes faster for your face than for your feet. As explained in Einstein’s theory of relativity, the closer you are to the center of the Earth, the slower time goes.
- A day isn’t really 24 hours. The Earth takes exactly 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.2 seconds to rotate. This is measured in something called “Sidereal” time – It only becomes 24 hours because due to its orbit relative to the sun which adds about 4 minutes thus our 24 hour day.
- There were 370 days in a year during the dinosaur era. As the years pass, the Earth’s spin is getting slower because of the moon’s gravity causing the days to be longer by 1.7 milliseconds per century.
- A day in Mercury is 2 years long.
- Time seems to be going faster as we are getting older. It is because new events seem to take a longer period of time than familiar events. It is called the “oddball effect”.
- The shortest moment of time that can exist is known as Planck Time, based on the quantum theory. It is 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 second.
- Time seems to pass faster during occupied time than idle time. This is the reason why some elevators have mirrors or play music; so people will have something to distract them while waiting.
- People often choose the shorter slow-moving line than the long fast-moving line even though the waiting time for both lines are equal.
- Overestimating how long a task will be done improves how enjoyable it seems according to psychologist Aaron Sackett. That is why theme parks give overestimated line wait times.
- Time seems to be slower when we are fighting against our instincts. It is because trying to regulate our emotions stretches the perception of time.
- The Soviet Union changed the length of week three times between 1929 and 1940. In 1930, they removed weekends to accomplish work quotas. In 1931, it became a six-day week, then back to a seven-day week in 1940.
- Englishman Moses BruineCotworth invented the International Fixed Calendar in 1859 which consists of 13 months – with the extra month called, Sol.
- Everything we see is in the past. It is because light takes time to reach us. In fact, the sun that we see is about 8 minutes and 20 seconds older.
- Try counting the seconds between seeing a lightning and hearing thunder. A three-second delay means that the lightning strike is 0.6 miles away.
- The Strontium clock is the most accurate clock ever built. It is accurate to within a second over 15 billion years.
- “Time flies when you’re having fun.”, is not always true. Based on a study, some people find time to become slower when they pay much attention to things that they enjoy doing. An example is listening to music.
- Weather can also affect time. Strong winds can slow the Earth’s rotation by a fraction of millisecond every 24 hours.
- If the Earth was compressed into 24 hours, the first humans would appear just 40 seconds before midnight.
- Time is an illusion. Based on brain imaging studies, our perception of time stretches when our eyes shift from one point to another. It creates the illusion of an elongated second.
- John Henry Belville, a businessman in 1836, sold people time. He worked at the Greenwich Observatory every morning where he would set his pocket watch’s time and sell the precise time to people in the city.
- There is no such thing as “now”. According to Einstein, the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion because space and time are fluid which are affected by gravity and speed.
- The faster you move, the slower the time passes. If you fly to Sirius at 99% of the speed of light, the people you left on Earth would have aged more than 17 years when you fly back. On the other hand, you would have aged less than two and a half years only.
- According to three Spanish scientists, time may eventually stop. There will be a point when everything will come to a standstill which opposes the theory of relativity.