You Live in the Past/The Flash Lag Effect - Science Journal Entry One

This video explained the theory of how we human beings live in the past. Nerve impulses can only send information to our brain at a top speed of 250 miles per hour. This means that our brain does not receive data instantaneously, but rather after a short delay. Testing was done by rotating a circle with a flashing centre around on a screen in a circle, and telling participants to look in the centre. When the participants described what they saw, the said that they saw the flashing light slightly outside of the circle, on not inside it. This is known as the flash lag effect. After testing was completed, it was found that humans can only tell an event happened about 80 milliseconds after the fact. For example, let’s say you just picked up a pencil. You think that you just picked up the pencil but you actually picked up the pencil 80 milliseconds ago. Since there is a delay for every action that takes place, you start to get used to it, and eventually, you experience no lag at all. Tests have been conducted that simulate this theory. If you get a test subject to press a button that turns on a light 80 milliseconds after the button was pressed, the participant will eventually get used to the delay and forget it is even there. When the delay was shortened to 40 milliseconds, the subjects claims that they did not touch the button, and the light turned on.

  I chose this topic because I found it interesting that nothing happens in so called “real time.” Everything that happens has actually happened slightly in the past. I found this quite interesting because whenever I do something, I think back to this video, and think about what I did actually already happened, even though I thought that it just happened.

 I believe that this is scientifically correct. After multiple tests, scientists were able to recreate the results of how our brain receives signals in the past. If a user controls a light with a button, and the light comes on less than 80 milliseconds after the button was pressed, the user says that they did not touch the button and the light came on. It also makes sense because the brain cannot receive signals immediately. There has to be a pause before our brain can fully comprehend what is going on.

   
Proof to this theory can be shown by the flash lag effect. In the tests, test subjects looked at a flashing dot in the middle of a rotating circle. The users said that the flash was occurring outside of the circle, even though it was in the centre of the circle. This theory can also be proven because the top speed of neuron impulses is 250 miles per hour, and many impulses travel slower than this. That means that our brain does not receive signals from our surroundings instantaneously, but rather, after a short delay.

This is another way of demonstrating the flash lag effect. The bar on the bottom appears only when the top bar is aligned with it, although this is probably not what you see. Most likely, you see the top bar slightly past the bottom bar when the bottom bar appears. This is caused by the flash lag effect.