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Articles

Time Stands Still

Jeremy Hueting on the perception of time.

I vaguely recall the case of a teacher who was at the top of a ladder clearing the guttering of his house. The bottom of the ladder was dangerously close to the wall, causing it to be so unstable that, when he leant back to reach into the gutter, the ladder toppled sideways and he fell off. When describing the event later on, the man claimed that time appeared to stand still at the instant that the ladder started to move. His train of thought had gone something like this: As the ladder started to slip he froze every muscle in his body in the hope that it was his movement that was causing the ladder to slide. When he realised that this wasn’t working he searched for something to hold onto but found nothing.

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