爲什麼人越長大時間過得越快?新研究說這不是幻覺範例

As we humans grow older and wiser, it's not unusual to feel as if time were whizzing by, quietly gathering speed with every year.

隨着我們人類年齡和智慧的增長，我們常常會感到時間在飛快地流逝，而且每年都在悄悄地加快速度。

Mechanical engineer Adrian Bejan from Duke University now thinks he has figured out why, and just like ageing, he suspects the experience is both universal and inescapable.

來自杜克大學的機械工程師Adrian Bejan現在認爲他已經找到了原因，就像衰老一樣，他懷疑這種體驗是普遍的，也是不可避免的。

Adhering to the physical laws of life and evolution, Bejan argues that as our eyes fatigue and our brains grow slower, it is only natural to feel as though we are losing time.

Bejan堅持生命和進化的物理規律，他認爲，當我們的眼睛疲勞，大腦發育變慢時，感覺時間流逝是很自然的。

"People are often amazed at how much they remember from days that seemed to last forever in their youth," he said.

他說:“人們常常會驚訝地發現，在他們年輕的時候，那些似乎永遠不會消失的日子，他們卻能記住那麼多。”

"It's not that their experiences were much deeper or more meaningful, it's just that they were being processed in rapid fire."

“這並不是說他們的經歷更深刻或更有意義，而是他們的經歷被迅速處理了。”

Anyone who has ever watched water come to boil knows intuitively that their "sense of time" is only a perception. Far from being a reliable measurement, it's more like a mental construct, constantly changing over time.

任何見過水燒開的人都直觀地知道，他們的“時間感”只是一種感知。它遠不是一個可靠的測量方法，更像是一個隨着時間不斷變化的心理構造。

This essentially means that the seconds, minutes, and hours we keep in our heads are inherently different to the ones we count on our clocks.

這本質上意味着我們頭腦中的秒、分和小時本質上不同於我們依靠時鐘計算的秒、分和小時。

"The time that you perceive is not the same as the time perceived by another," writes Bejan.

“你感知的時間和別人感知的時間是不一樣的，”Bejan寫道。

"Why? Because the young mind receives more images during one day than the same mind in old age."

“爲什麼?因爲年輕的大腦一天內接收到的圖像比年老時多。”

Put simply, an older brain takes longer to process the present. Just look at any baby and you'll notice that their eyes dart about much faster than your own, taking in the scene at a rapid pace.

簡單地說，老年人的大腦需要更長的時間來處理此時此刻。只要看看任何一個嬰兒，你就會注意到他們的眼睛比你的快得多，快速地捕捉到場景。

"Said another way, if the lifespan is measured in terms of the number of images perceived during life, then the frequency of mental images at young age is greater than in old age," writes Bejan.

Bejan寫道:“另一種說法是，如果壽命是用一生中所感知到的圖像數量來衡量的，那麼年輕時大腦中圖像的頻率要比年老時高。”