Time, Perception and Fish at 5:24 PM

The other day, we went to the Seattle Aquarium with the Allens, and I don't know if you've ever been there, but they have a gigantic tank in the entrance of the building that makes up the first exhibit. 

Well as it turns out, just after we paid to get in, there was a fish feeding show starting at this tank. Apparently, the Aquarium has a lot of extra money to burn because when they feed the fish, two divers in dry-suits with full face masks that even had microphones in them get in the tank to feed the various species of fish.

Basically, the divers get in the tank, and feed the fish while talking to the public about them. It was during this show when one of the divers said something interesting. 

She stated that the salmon at the top of the tank swim very quickly, eat very quickly, have very fast metabolisms, and have a life span of about only 3 years. 

She also said the the rockfish at the bottom of the tank swim very slowly, barely go anywhere, eat very slowly, have very slow metabolisms, and have a life span of over a hundred years.

These statements got me thinking, what if time affects these two species of fish differently? 

Let's say that time moves very quickly for the salmon. In his own perception, he is moving at a perfectly normal rate. But as the rockfish looks upward to the top of the tank in his own little world of time-perception, he just sees a blur of all the salmon zipping back and forth! To him, watching salmon is like watching a movie on fast-forward, while to the salmon, watching him is like watching a movie in slowmo.

Here, let's try an example: In our example a human has a time-perception (we'll call it TP from now on) of 1, and the salmon has a TP of 3 (meaning he sees time as 3 times the speed of that of a human) and the rockfish has a TP of .5 (meaning he sees time as one half the speed of a human). 

That would mean that salmon move quickly, humans move at a perfectly normal rate, and rockfish go really slowly, right?

Wrong... sort of. There is a problem with this example, it's from a human's perspective, I said that humans are 1, right? well the salmon doesn't say that, he thinks he has a TP of 1, the human has a TP of 1/3rd and the rockfish has a TP of 1/6th. But there's a flaw with that too, the rockfish doesn't see it that way, to him, he has a TP of 1, a human has a TP of 2, and the salmon has a TP of 6.

confused yet?

It's like this, each of the three types of entities (humans, salmon and rockfish) have their own standard of measuring the events in their lives and the lives of the other two entities, but each of his measurements is affected by how he perceives time!

This theory that I have brought up is supported by the fact that, in theory, forward time travel is possible and that time is relative to the speed of the object perceiving it.

But what do you think? I know most of you probably don't even like studying fish, or quantum physics, but even if you don't like either of those things, or you just think I spend way too much time sitting around thinking about random stuff, (like fish watching movies in fast-forward) give me a comment!

Keep in mind, I'm not saying that this time perception theory is true, but it's definitely very interesting to think about it.

-Graydon L