Too much relative time on my hands...

[Luke]

I have as the thread title pronounces, too much time on my hand. I have been trying for a long time to wrap my pea brain around the space/time concept. I keep coming back to a problem with time. Perhaps smarter minds than mine will assist. Here goes,,

As most of you have pretty steady jobs/careers, you go to work everyday and as if by magic one day you look up too realize you have been doing the same thing for a decade. Given certain circumstances one day can either drag by or fly by, all relative to the circumstance. Any idea what the magic is in hindsight?

We are all of us are on this spining stone, circling the sun. Could there be some type of connection to our movement through space/time, or is a chemical reaction in our brains that create the magic of hindsight?

Furthermore, I hope that the worst accident anyone here has today is a simple spill. The same effect happens in auto accidents, and probably all things unplanned. Your eyes see the coffee cup teetering on the edge of a coaster, and time seemingly slows down. I am thinking this is caused by an increase of adrealine to my brain.

Now in the amount of time it takes to spill my coffee, the planet hasn't moved as far as it did in the decade spent on my last job. Here is where things start to derail for me. I can't seem to see,hear,feel or find anything related to relativity. Once again I suspect my ignorance is showing.

[American Patriot]

I have as the thread title pronounces, too much time on my hand. I have been trying for a long time to wrap my pea brain around the space/time concept. I keep coming back to a problem with time. Perhaps smarter minds than mine will assist. Here goes,,

As most of you have pretty steady jobs/careers, you go to work everyday and as if by magic one day you look up too realize you have been doing the same thing for a decade. Given certain circumstances one day can either drag by or fly by, all relative to the circumstance. Any idea what the magic is in hindsight?

I'd call my job more of a "steady pain in the royal ass" actually.... I've been here 15 years. With the exception of 26 years of military service, both active (12 years) and Reserves (12) years, this is the longest I was at any particular job.

Before that (and while in Reserves) I was also a college instructor (Electronics) for six full years.

Before I went in the military I had two jobs working for others. A gas pump guy (back in those days when you ran out, checked the oil, pumped the gas, filled the tires with air) and I did that job for about 6 months.

The other job working for someone else was at the "Lafayette Electronics" store in Down Town Detroit. I kept that job about six months.

The only other LONG running job I've had was my job cutting grass (my own private company as a kid) and as a TV shop repairman (I owned that at the age of 16 and sold everything when I joined the military).

So - for fifteen years I've sat here on my ass here wondering about the rest of the world, getting out there to see it again (I've already visited 49 countries now....I'm not tired of seeing the world).

So yeah, time "flies when you're having fun" and even when you're not.

Truth is, I suspect this thread is about "What the hell happened to my youth, and why in the HELL is time FLYING now?" - is that about right?

We are all of us are on this spining stone, circling the sun. Could there be some type of connection to our movement through space/time, or is a chemical reaction in our brains that create the magic of hindsight?

it SEEMS that is precisely what you're asking.

I think that as a child of say, 3 or 4 a year is a lot of your life. At four years old it's on quarter of what you've already lived, so it seems... relatively speaking to be VERY LONG and it's why children get so anxious awaiting Christmas.

To us old Farts - like you and me, Mr. Luke, a year is around 1/50th of our lives (or even less) so a year, again relatively speaking, so a YEAR FLIES BY.

Furthermore, I hope that the worst accident anyone here has today is a simple spill. The same effect happens in auto accidents, and probably all things unplanned. Your eyes see the coffee cup teetering on the edge of a coaster, and time seemingly slows down. I am thinking this is caused by an increase of adrealine to my brain.

I hope NO one has any accidents. I've been much more careful lately that usual. I get those internal voices that tell me to "slow down" or "go faster" and usually I listen to them now.

Now in the amount of time it takes to spill my coffee, the planet hasn't moved as far as it did in the decade spent on my last job. Here is where things start to derail for me. I can't seem to see,hear,feel or find anything related to relativity. Once again I suspect my ignorance is showing.

In another small way, you can actually see the world moving pretty quickly.

I'll give you an example. The planet is 360 degrees around. There are 24 hours in a day. It takes the sun 1 Hour to move through 1 time zone. If you work out the math, that's 15 degrees an hour.

Let me take this further.

Each arc minute around the equator is = 1' which is actually 6076 feet or one nautical mile. Thus, 15*24 = 360 degrees, multiply that times 60 (the amount of minutes in one degree and that equals 21600 nautical miles (nm).

So, the earth is spinning VERY quickly.

The Earth orbits the sun. The sun is 93 million miles away. It takes 365 days for the earth to go around the sun. I'm sure if I didn't have a migraine right now I could work out the rest of the math to tell you how fast we're really going.

But... things are moving quickly, Luke... whether you're standing here watching the sun rise and set, or paying attention to the seasons going by - watching the laugh lines and crows-feet growing larger on our faces. lol

[Luke]

Actually this makes some sense to me, now. Time does indeed seem to fly when you are having fun, now if I can learn to have fun while my spine degenerates all will be well with the world.

I can almost understand how space/time can be bent, perhaps therein lives the answers I am seeking.