Crash time

摘要

Douglas Fox relates how researcher David Eagleman asked volunteers to endure 30 metres of free fall into a safety net while wearing an LED device to determine whether altered perception or a change in the speed of observation could account for the feeling that time slows down during stressful events. Eagleman decided the phenomenon must be a "trick of memory" because his volunteers could not distinguish between rapidly alternating images on the LED device (24 October, p 32).