Radiolab and Time

Here's the page where you can listen to the archive of Radiolab.  I just finished the show called "Time," and there were some amazing things talked about, but my favorite thing was that they discussed an artist who had taken Beethoven's 9th Symphony, which lasts 70 minutes, and slowed it down so that it lasted 24 hours.  They played excerpts of it, and it was haunting.  I'm not sure I could sit through a 24 hours version.  Maybe 12.

They also discussed people, who due to brain injury, either slow way down or speed way up.  This one guy would sit in these weird positions, seemingly motionless.  One day, the guy had his arm raised partially, and the doctor asked him why.  He responded that he was wiping his nose.  So the doctor set up a camera to take periodic photographs over two hours and when he flipped them he realized the the man made a smooth motion to wipe his nose.  When he showed this to the patient, the patient was astounded.  To him, he was moving at a normal speed.

They also discussed a woman who was in fast motion.  The doctor would put her in a circle with 7-8 of his students and the purpose was to toss a ball to her and for her to throw it back.  She reacted so quickly that the ball would snap back into the thrower's hand before he could lower it.  Although she was dysfunctional, her reaction time was much faster than that of the most well-trained athletes.

I have always thought that my circadian rhythms were a few hours too long for the rotation of the Earth.  For most of my life, if left to my own devices, I would stay awake and sleep too long for a twenty-four hour cycle.  I thought once that forcing myself onto a twenty-four hour cycle was causing me mental damage and leapt to the simplistic idea that all mental illness derived from people's coping with the difference between the speed of the rotating Earth and their innate circadian rhythm.  But then I heard of an experiment, where scientists built an apartment of sorts deep underground.  They filled it with all of the amenities needed to support human life except any way to tell time.  They sent a women down and told her to re-emerge when three months had passed.  About four and a half months later, she emerged thinking she had been there for three months.  Her menstrual cycle had even slowed down.

So for those of  you who believe that life arrived on Earth partially evolved, seeded by an alien race, it would suggest that this alien race lived on a planet that rotated a bit more slowly than ours.

Anyway, this is a page filled with hours of intelligent radio entertainment.

http://www.radiolab.org/series/podcasts/