“Bullet Time” is a term created by the special effects team working on the movie, The Matrix. It refers to Neo’s ability to think and move faster than bullets.
I experienced this extreme-perception phenomenon in real life. I didn’t dodge any bullets… I was hit by one.
My aunt and I were coming home from a business lunch. We were sitting at a light when our car was struck from behind by a lady who had fallen asleep. She was going at least 40 miles an hour.
The rear end of the car was destroyed. The contents of the trunk were pushed up against our seats.
I did not see the car coming, but as soon as the impact occurred, I watched glass fly past my head in slow motion and noticed the patterns in which they bounced off the inside of the windshield and back down to the dashboard and onto us.
I know this wasn’t a matter of remembering it that way because during the accident I was thinking about what a strange thing was happening.
There is a pretty famous experiment, probably still going on, where they drop people from a tower into a net and have them read numbers off a wrist watch like device. If the subject is standing on the ground, the number on the device blinks so fast that he cannot make it out, but while he’s falling his brain speeds up and he can read the number.
David Eagleman is the neuroscientist who does experiments like this one.
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