Psychologists explain all the known irregularities in the perceived rate of change of time by the peculiarities of the human psyche: the more we rush somewhere, the faster it flies; the more boring the business we are doing, the slower it goes on.
But there are thousands of documented evidence that cannot be explained by the peculiarities of the psyche. People not only asserted unfoundedly that their subjective time was greatly accelerated (and external time was slowed down). Eyewitnesses described the phenomena they saw, which could only be confirmed by accelerated filming; In just a split second, they did tens and hundreds of times more things than people with the best reaction could do!
There were many such cases during the war, for example, when soldiers saw that a grenade / projectile was exploding nearby and they could see in all details how very slowly, as if in slow motion filming, the hull cracks and sparks of fire burst out. And while the grenade exploded very slowly, these lucky ones managed to find shelter from the explosion. All in those very split seconds!
But in this article, we will dwell in detail on cases in peacetime. And where in peacetime do accidents and accidents occur every day? That's right, on the highways. Therefore, it is not surprising that ordinary drivers often encounter unexplained phenomena in critical situations:
“I immediately noticed that some of the nuts on the motorcycle loosened slightly, but this did not pose a big danger, and since I was late for work, I decided to go. The sun had not yet risen, the track, as far as the eye could see, was empty. Got a decent speed. When the headwind finally woke me up, he took the key and began to tighten the nuts with his right hand, with his left holding the steering wheel.
Suddenly, out of the thinning darkness, a truck appeared without lights. Right in front of me! I jerked my hand - and there the key got stuck, does not let my hand! He turned the motorcycle over to the side and skidded. I fall on my side. I try to free my hand. It turns out that he pressed his sleeve with a nut. It seems that he unscrewed it for a whole minute, but unscrewed it and saw that I was still falling on my side !!! (Alexander Sergeevich; North Caucasus, 1960s).
In September 1968, Aleksey Ivanovich Burenin, then a 5th year student of the Physics and Chemistry Faculty of the Moscow Institute of Chemical Technology. DI Mendeleev, went with his group to harvest potatoes. The bus suddenly caught fire. In June 1998, he talked about the events of his student youth:
“Time for me not only slowed down, I kind of became out of time altogether. There was no fear, there was only a calm curiosity. I watched the driver run away from the cab, forgetting to open the doors for us, how the girls were hysterical, how they were trying to break the glass.
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Calmly opened the doors, everyone rushed to her, but I calmly left the last, then returned with two guys for things, then went to the driver, advised him to drain the gasoline in order to avoid an explosion. The bus, of course, burned to the ground, but the explosion was avoided."
In 1975, Alexander Nikodimovich Basov also nearly got into a car accident near Moscow:
“The speed is about 80 km / h. We drive around a hill, and suddenly, right in front of us, in the middle of the road, the Moskvich sharply braked. And so I sit quietly and watch what happens. Very smoothly, like in slow motion, the hood of the car began to turn. Everything is going terribly slow. But I turn my head to the driver and am surprised - his hands quickly, swiftly rotate the steering wheel!
I was struck by this contrast. The hood of the car is already turning the other way. Now we hit "Moskvich" - thought flows in normal time. But our car sails a few centimeters from the car and freezes, standing across the road. How long the driver and I stood motionless, I do not know. What I described took 58-60 seconds. In fact, it was only a few moments …"
“I remember every little thing, every moment., A tire burst, the car was suddenly thrown off the road, it hit the fence. I distinctly remember how slowly the pickets broke, how one of them suddenly arched and broke through the windshield, just opposite the driver. Its sharp end was pointed at his chest. I was stunned … However, my 16-year-old son Bob bent down sharply and a sharp stake pierced through the seat! (Wheeler's mother and son; Coventry, England; 1992).
In 1998, such a letter came from a resident of the village of Priozerny, Leningrad Region, N. Nikitina:
“I crossed the street, forgetting that at this intersection, drivers always increase their speed. I ran, but already realized that I could not manage to avoid being hit by the truck. And here time slowed down. So it seemed to me then. I was waiting for the blow, but it still was not and was not, but I could not run faster.
And then, just as unbearably slowly, the car ran over me, and time seemed to have completely stopped. The speed of thinking, meanwhile, remained the same, and I was well aware that I was finished. I was so surprised by the unbearable smoothness of what was happening that I did not even try to find a way out of this situation.
And then consciousness turned off. So they turn off the light by pressing the button, and it turned off immediately and completely. I was lying on the asphalt in a strange position: my knees and chin are pressed to my chest, my arms are bent at the elbows, palms are outstretched. Kolobok pose. I was perfectly aware of everything that had happened, my head was clear, but I could not straighten up in any way.
The driver of the car that had hit me ran up, began to lift me, and I finally managed to get to my feet. And then I noticed that I was very far from the truck, a few meters in the direction of travel. The consequences of the collision were a bruise on the thigh (where the car hit) and slightly scratched palms and knees.
It was necessary to group up and roll in order not to get under the wheels. This was the only way to be saved. Who taught me? Who helped? Indeed, at the moment of danger, my consciousness was disconnected from the horror that was approaching me."
A similar case was described by E. Golomolzin:
“With the chief geologist of the quarry, we were returning from the site to the base on a motorcycle with a sidecar. It started to rain, and the road was immediately covered with slippery clay grease … Suddenly a strong gust of wind pulled the miner's helmet off his head and threw it back onto the road. The driver jerked the steering wheel out of surprise, the motorcycle tilted and …
Then time almost completely stopped. I sat in the wheelchair and watched with interest. The front wheel of the motorcycle turned almost ninety degrees, caught on a bump in the road, and the motorcycle began to rise smoothly with us. The driver caught my attention. He raised himself off the saddle, but his hands, as if glued, continued to grip the steering wheel tightly.
His head was held high and his eyes were gazing into the horizon. At the same time, the greatest amazement was written on his frozen face, but not fear or horror. When the rider could no longer hold on, he released the steering wheel, slowly stretched out his arms in front of him and, smoothly separating from the motorcycle, flew somewhere forward, still peering into the horizon.
His unbuttoned cloak swayed powerfully and majestically. I suddenly felt irresistibly funny - at that moment he was extremely reminiscent of a giant eagle - and, unable to restrain myself, I laughed loudly, as it seemed to me. This was the end of my fun - at that very moment I found myself lying on the road under a motorcycle, and a trickle of gas was pouring over me.
How I managed to fall out of the wheelchair - I can't imagine! A colleague who ran to help freed me from the motorcycle, helped me to my feet. We felt ourselves and were surprised to find the absence of not only fractures, but even bruises.
According to my colleague, the accident for him happened instantly - he jerked the steering wheel to the side and immediately found himself on the road in front of the overturned motorcycle."
Another case at Golomolzin occurred in Bashkiria, where his geological team was relocated to a new area of work. On the day of departure, as in the previous case, bad weather broke out.
“The rain turned into a large hail, which beat violently on the cab and the awning of the geological GAZ-66, loaded to the brim with boxes with samples and field equipment. The road went along the edge of an abyss through a mountain pass. The gravel on the road was mixed with the mud and represented a very unreliable road surface, so the wheels often slip, causing a displeased roar of the engine.
In case of an unexpected evacuation, despite the severe hail, we sat right next to the cockpit, throwing back the front canopy of the tarpaulin awning. I did not fix the moment when this happened, but I heard how suddenly the strained howls of the engine turned into a completely monotonous monotonous roar. Surprised, I looked down at the road and saw that at the turn with the rise, the car began to slowly drift to the edge of the cliff.
The wheels were spinning at a breakneck speed, but the car stood still and was moving terribly slowly, literally by a millimeter, towards the abyss. Time to jump, I thought. The extreme slowness of the action caused a feeling of confidence that everything could be done. It seemed that it was possible to safely jump from the body to the ground and several times bypass the car sliding off the road.
I looked back at my fellow travelers. They sat with petrified faces, looking far ahead, not paying the slightest attention to the fact that a catastrophe was about to happen. "Why are they hesitating?" - I thought. By the way, I did not feel neither rain nor hail at that moment.
Suddenly, something changed in the sound of the engine running, a new bass note appeared, and the car began to slowly crawl away from the edge of the cliff, where the sheer cliffs were already visible. Immediately, the roar of icy heavenly grapeshot fell on me. When we arrived at the scene, it turned out that no one noticed the critical situation. When the car was carried into the abyss, the driver immediately turned on the second bridge and easily brought it back onto the road."
Vitaly Ch. Ends our story:
“Around 1970, my grandfather and I were returning home. He had already crossed the road, something delayed me, and grandfather Stepan made a sign to me to stop. I had almost reached him when I suddenly noticed that a sandal had come off my foot.
Everything happened purely automatically - I just turned around, ran to the middle of the road, picked it up and returned, while realizing what an unforgivable, deadly stupid thing I was doing. On the run out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that the car stopped, but as soon as I ran to the side, it whizzed past, still at high speed. It turns out that everything happened very quickly, so quickly that my grandfather did not even notice how I was returning."
