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Life just seems to speed up
年纪越大，时间过得越快？
When we are children, the summer holidays seem to last forever, and the wait between Spring Festivals feels like an eternity. But later, we may find that the time just seems to fly by, with weeks, months and entire seasons disappearing from a blurred calendar at a fast speed. Why does time seem to pass faster as we get older?
小时候，我们总觉得暑假似乎永远都不会结束，春节仿佛遥遥无期。但后来，我们或许会觉得光阴似箭，一周又一周、一月又一月、春去秋来，日子匆匆从模糊不清的日历上溜走。为什么随着我们长大，时间却似乎变得更快了呢？
According to the Daily Mail, our brains degrade as we get older. That decreases the amount of information we can deal with in a single day.
据《每日邮报》报道，我们的大脑会随着年龄渐长而退化。我们一天能够处理的信息量也因此减少了。
"The human mind senses time changing when the perceived images change," Adrian Bejan from Duke University, the US, told the Daily Mail. "The present is different from the past because the mental viewing has changed, not because somebody's clock rings."
“当被感知的影像发生变化时，人类大脑会感觉到时间的流逝，”来自美国杜克大学的阿德里安·贝扬在接受《每日邮报》采访时表示。“现在与过去不同，是因为心理状态也发生了变化，而不是因为人们的生物钟有所改变。”
Infants, for example, move their eyes much more often than adults because they're processing images at a faster rate. They deal with a large amount of information and do many things in a single day. This makes them feel like a single day lasts for a long time.
举例来说，幼儿转动眼球的频率会比成年人高，因为他们处理影像的速度会更快些。他们一天内会处理大量信息，做许多事情。这会令他们觉得一天很长。
However, as people get older, fewer images are processed in the same amount of time. Therefore, older people receive less information during a day than younger people. This causes things to seem as though they're happening more quickly.
然而，随着人们年龄增长，在相同时间内处理的影像变少了。因此，年长者一天之内所接收的信息会比年轻人少。这会令事情看上去似乎发生得更快了。
Apart from the degradation of our brains, some psychological reasons also make us experience time differently.
除了大脑退化之外，一些心理因素也会让我们对时间的感觉发生改变。
People may measure time by the number of memorable events that can be recalled within a certain period.
人们或许会用回忆中某一时期所发生的难忘事件来衡量时间。
When we think about our youth, we may remember a life packed with first-time activities, for example, our first time traveling without our parents, or our first date. We experienced these events so vividly that time then seems to us to have passed very slowly. According to David Eagleman of the Baylor College of Medicine in the US, recalling these memories makes us feel like they took forever.
当我们回忆起年少时期时，我们或许会想起生活中的种种第一次，比如，第一次离开父母出门旅游，或者第一次约会。我们所经历的这些事情历历在目，那段时光在我们看来仿佛走得很慢。来自美国贝勒医学院的大卫·依格曼认为，回想往事会让我们觉得那些时光很漫长。
Many adults find life is routine and sometimes dull. For this reason, when they look back, they might feel like there are not many exciting things to remember. Therefore, time seems to be moving faster to them.
许多成年人都觉得生活一成不变，了无生趣。因此，当他们回顾过去时，或许会觉得没有多少有趣好玩的事情。正因为如此，时间对于他们而言，似乎就过得更快了。
