The paradox of time- why does time whoosh faster as we are old?

“My.. my god… time flies so fast. It was just like yesterday January 1st, 2022, and now it has been July. In less than six months, the year 2022 is going to end. I had barely completed anything on my wish list. Time flies so fast.”

Is this sound familiar? It’s not just you, a widespread grievance for many, that time whoosh by faster and faster, and the days and years become shorter as we age.

But wait…

Is that the time really moving so fast that we tend to miss our favourite beats in life? Or does the Earth's rotating time is becoming faster than in the previous years, moving furtherer away from the Sagittarius A*, thus time become relatively quicker?

When we reflect on our childhood, time wasn’t passing this quick. It was relatively slower. We had time all day, the never-ending class hours in elementary school, seeing friends, and having fun with them, and time was an infinite loop while growing up took almost forever.

So, why is it that we feel time races faster and faster when we are old especially? Perhaps, Professor Adrian Bejan, from Harvard University has an answer to this puzzling question. In his article, he hypothesized that as we grow older, the rate at which we process visual information becomes slower, and that was the reason why we feel time moves faster when we are old. He explained why this happens:

1. As we age, the neuron network becomes more complex, thus, the time taken to transmit and process signals become longer.

2. As we age, more cells in the brain are damaged and become worn out, contributing to delayed processing of stimuli and signals.

This makes the brain perceive fewer ‘frames-per-second’; thus, more time is taken by the brain to process new images. It is like when we see a lovely artwork for the first time, immersed and mesmerized by its beauty. When we finally took off our eyes from the painting, realizing that time had passed so fast. The truth is, the brain was processing every piece of information in the painting, taking its time, while the Earth’s absolute time (24 hours) was ticking and moving at its usual pace (not fast at all!).

Children processes images like a slow-motion camera, with thousands of images registered in their brain every second, therefore, time appears relatively slower for them. That was the reason why we perceived that time is moving slower when we were younger and it’s like catching a bullet train as we become old.

Besides Professor Bejan’s explanation which was mainly based on the principle of biology and physics, there are also other notable hypotheses to explain why time passes faster as we are old; memorable and significant events in our life are often registered in the brain as something that happened for a longer duration, thus, making it as though time passes slower for us. Contrarily, when we grow older, we tend to pay the least attention to occasions and celebrations that we were eagerly waiting for; those waiting days were long for a child. Stress and a busy schedule also tend to make us pay the least attention to time, consequently, time passes faster for an adult.

So, here is another paradox…. why do the 3 hours of exam finish very fast for a student (in a blink of an eye), but the same 3 hours of exam invigilation took almost forever for the invigilator?