Now we know how Neo was able to stop those bullets in the Matrix…
We all know the secret to make a minute last longer than it actually is; start doing planks. But what would happen if we could actually make a second last for one whole hour? This idea straight up sounds like a plot of a sci-fi movie. Imagine if we could control time according to our own will (that would be pretty disastrous I presume) According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, time itself is an illusion that actually moves relative to an observer. Suppose you’re traveling in a high-speed rocket, you would age more slowly compared to the people back on Earth. But that doesn’t mean we can manipulate time in our everyday lives (not yet anyway).
To demonstrate how it would actually feel like if we were able to make a second last for an hour, the Slow Mo Guys shot a video at 90,000 frames per second using a high-speed camera that is able to capture the normal everyday routine at impressive frame rates. The video is posted on YouTube and already has about a million views.
It’s interesting to see how the video depicts everyday life in slow motion and gives us an idea of what we could have experienced if time did actually move slower. While time manipulation is not possible by humans, scientists have been able to create different scenarios to test time dilation to higher precision. Take the example of GPS satellites which are literally clocks in the orbit. They travel at speeds up t0 14,000 kilometers per hour well above the Earth’s surface at a distance of 20,000 kilometers. Compared to an atomic clock on our planet, these satellites lose about 7 microseconds each day and for them to function properly, time dilation has to be taken into consideration.