Lockdown Is Changing Our Perception of Time, a Devastating Meteor that Never Landed, and Elephants Can Catch Yawns from Humans
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 964 Ratings
🗓️ 22 June 2020
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn about how lockdown is changing our perception of time; how the most devastating meteor on record may have never even landed; and why it’s a big deal that elephants can catch contagious yawning from humans.
Why lockdown is changing our perception of time by Kelsey Donk
- Rocheleau, J. (2020, May 27). A Monday Is a Tuesday Is a Sunday as COVID-19 Disrupts Internal Clocks. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-monday-is-a-tuesday-is-a-sunday-as-covid-19-disrupts-internal-clocks/
- Hammond, C. (2020). Why time seems to be going faster while we are in lockdown. Bbc.Com. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200520-why-lockdown-life-feels-like-its-going-faster
Maybe the most devastating meteor on record never even landed by Cameron Duke
- Atkinson, N. (2009, June 24). 1908 Tunguska Event Caused by Comet, New Research Reveals. Universe Today. https://www.universetoday.com/33367/1908-tunguska-event-caused-by-comet-new-research-says/
- Khrennikov, D. E., Titov, A. K., Ershov, A. E., Pariev, V. I., & Karpov, S. V. (2020). On the possibility of through passage of asteroid bodies across the Earth’s atmosphere. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 493(1), 1344–1351. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa329
- Kvasnytsya, V., Wirth, R., Dobrzhinetskaya, L., Matzel, J., Jacobsen, B., Hutcheon, I., Tappero, R., & Kovalyukh, M. (2013). New evidence of meteoritic origin of the Tunguska cosmic body. Planetary and Space Science, 84, 131–140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pss.2013.05.003
- March 2011, C. Q. C.-L. S. C. 12. (n.d.). Top 10 Greatest Explosions Ever. Livescience.Com. Retrieved May 21, 2020, from https://www.livescience.com/13201-top-10-greatest-explosions-chernobyl-supernova.html
- New Paper Has a Wild Explanation For The Most Explosive “Meteor Impact” on Record. (2020, May 2020). Sciencealert.com. https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-a-new-theory-about-the-colossal-tunguska-event-explosion/amp
- Tunguska Event | 100 Wonders | Atlas Obscura. (2015). [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7PX51IeMbU
Elephants can catch contagious yawning from humans by Cameron Duke
- Baenninger, R. (1997). On yawning and its functions. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 4(2), 198–207. https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03209394
- Ferro, S. (2015, June 29). Elephants Observed Yawning for the First Time. Mentalfloss.com. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/65628/elephants-observed-yawning-first-time
- Rossman, Z. T., Hart, B. L., Greco, B. J., Young, D., Padfield, C., Weidner, L., Gates, J., & Hart, L. A. (2017). When Yawning Occurs in Elephants. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 4. https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2017.00022
- Rossman, Z. T., Padfield, C., Young, D., Hart, B. L., & Hart, L. A. (2020). Contagious Yawning in African Elephants (Loxodonta africana): Responses to Other Elephants and Familiar Humans. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2020.00252
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from |
| 0:04.7 | Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Gough. And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn about why |
| 0:09.1 | lockdown is changing our perception of time, how the most devastating meteor on record may have never even |
| 0:14.8 | landed, and why it's a big deal that elephants can catch contagious yawning from humans. |
| 0:20.5 | Let's satisfy some curiosity. Did the past few days feel like months, or did they go by in minutes? |
| 0:28.0 | If you're not an essential worker and you're still locked down in quarantine, |
| 0:32.0 | the answer might be both. For some people in quarantine, |
| 0:36.3 | time feels like it stretches out and also like it's really compressed. |
| 0:41.0 | Don't worry though, this is normal. Psychologists say that being on lockdown actually |
| 0:46.1 | changes how we perceive time. And it all comes down to how we measure time. |
| 0:51.0 | Psychologists say we measure time in two ways. |
| 0:54.8 | Prospectively and retrospectively. |
| 0:58.0 | Prospective time refers to how fast time is passing right now. Retrospective time is about the past. How fast did the last |
| 1:07.0 | day, week or decade go by? With prospective time, your perception of the present moments depends on what's grabbing your attention. |
| 1:15.2 | If you're immersed in activities, the hours may feel like they've flown by. |
| 1:19.7 | If you don't have much to do and you're constantly checking the clock, you may feel like time is moving more slowly. |
| 1:26.2 | But with retrospective time, that's reversed. That's because you perceive time in the past via your memories. The more standout memories you have, the slower |
| 1:35.8 | that time will seem to have passed. If you haven't done a whole lot, you won't have many |
| 1:40.8 | event markers to measure what happened and when, so time will seem to speed up. |
| 1:45.6 | The thing is, you can feel both the slowing and the speeding up of time at once. |
| 1:50.7 | Take for instance, a week-long vacation. Remember those? |
| 1:54.0 | While you're on the trip, time flies. Your attention is always on something new, |
... |
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