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Fall is the best-smelling season. Naturalists reveal why it's such a delight for the senses.

It's a perfect combination of organic and atmospheric reactions.

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A family playing football in the fall leaves.

There’s one day in mid-September when the first hint of crisp air cuts its way through the summer heat, and it signals that the world around us is in a period of transition. For many, fall is their favorite time of year because it’s all about getting cozy, as well as enjoying the earthy smell of leaves on the ground and the sweet-and-spicy flavors we associate with autumn.

Why does the fall smell so sweet? And why does the outside air mesh so perfectly with the scent of turkey or a pumpkin-spiced latte?

Why does fall have such a great smell?

The sweet, earthly smell of fall is actually caused by decay and decomposition. The once-green leaves have turned an autumnal hue of orange, brown, and yellow, and are decomposing into the rain-soaked ground. As they decompose, the leaves' carbohydrates and sugars do, too, releasing a sweet smell into the air.

fall, autumn, leaves change, fall smell, scent, pumpkin spice A woman playing in the fall leaves.via Canva/Photos

“That’s what fall is all about. Leaves are falling off the trees and the bacteria and fungi that are in the soil are actively digesting [them,]” Theresa Crimmins, director of the USA National Phenology Network, told PBS. “And in the process, various [gases] are being released, and that’s a lot of what the smells are.”

“The smell of fall represents a lot of decomposition as plants decay,” Pamela Dalton, a cognitive psychologist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, told WHYY. “As they change from when the leaves were green, and now they’re changing color, they’re also changing the kinds of odors that they give off. And that can be very evocative for us because it’s become associated with a period of time that is a somewhat pleasant transition for most people.”

Another reason why the fall smells so sweet is that the outside temperature makes it easier to identify specific scents. During the summer, heat and humidity trap many scents in the air, combining them so that many are indistinguishable. However, when things cool down, there are fewer volatile molecules in the air, allowing us to distinguish different scents, including those of decaying organic matter.

fall, autumn, leaves change, fall smell, scent, pumpkin spice A woman playing in the fall leaves.via Canva/Photos

Aside from the scientific reasons why fall has a delicious smell, there is an emotional component as well. In our brains, scent and emotion are very closely connected. Fall has a very strong smell that can trigger emotional memories.

“This direct pathway allows smells to quickly evoke intense emotional responses and memories,” Valentina Parma, the assistant director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, told Self. “When a particular scent is present during an emotionally significant event, it can become strongly encoded in the hippocampus.

That’s why when the first whiff of fall hits your nose, you may immediately begin to well up with emotions, thinking about your homecoming dance, Halloween from years past, Thanksgiving, watching a football game in the chilly air, or your first day of middle school.

Ultimately, it's interesting that the intoxicating smell of fall—a sense that brings people much joy and nostalgia—is tied to death and decay. It’s a reminder that we are connected to every turn in the cycle of life and that, even in a period of decay, one can find joy.

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It feels like time accelerates as we get older. An easy 60-second fix can help slow it down.

Some fascinating research shows that our perception of time may be linked to the length of our heartbeats.

Jordan Benton/Canva

Time accelerates as we get older, but there are some interesting ways we can slow it down.

Imagine this scenario, if you will: You're scrolling along, minding your own business on the internet, when this little nugget comes across your timeline: "1980 and 2023 are as far apart as 1937 and 1980. Sleep tight, old fogies!"


Wait, what? Your first reaction is, "That can't be right," so you pull out the calculator and do the math yourself—several times because you're sure you must've missed a number somewhere each time. You remember how long ago 1937 seemed in 1980, and there's absolutely no way that much time passed between 1980 and 2023. Buy you're wrong. As the warped reality of time washes over you, you sit in stunned silence, contemplating the existential crisis you've just been thrown into.

Why does time work this way? Why does it seem to get faster and faster and condense to make decades seem shorter and shorter as we age? And perhaps more importantly, how the heck do we stop time from feeling like a runaway freight train?

Here are a few theories about what creates the freight train phenomenon and what to do about it.

Time perception is relative—and kids perceive it differently

"Time flies when you're having fun" is a saying for a reason. Time also drags when you're doing drudgery work and feels like it stands still in moments of significance. And yet the ticking of seconds as they go by doesn't change tempo. We measure it with steady, unchanging beats, but how it feels changes constantly.

kids playing, time passing, perception of time Time moves more slowly for kids.Photo credit: Canva

This relativity exists in every passing moment, but it also exists in the bigger picture as well. The years felt like they passed by much more slowly when we were children, and by middle age, they feel like they pass in the blink of an eye. The pandemic gave us an even greater sense of this relativity as disruptions to our normal routines and the stress associated with the COVID-19 years messed with our sense of time. (On an odd side note, surveys show that our time perception during the pandemic varied a lot from place to place—people in some parts of the world felt that time moved more slowly, while others felt time moved more quickly.)

According to a 2023 Hungarian study published in Nature Scientific Reports, very young children perceive time differently than older children and adults. Researchers split 138 people into three age groups—pre-kindergarten, school-age and adults 18 and over—and showed them two videos of the same duration, one that was "eventful" and one that was "uneventful." Interestingly, the pre-K group perceived the eventful video to be longer, while the older children and adults saw the uneventful video as longer.

The way the study participants described the length of the videos in gestures was also telling. Young children were much more likely to use vertical hand gestures, connoting volume or magnitude, to indicate a length of time than the other two age groups. School-aged kids and adults tended to use horizontal gestures, indicating time as linear, increasing with age.

Our neural processing slows down as we age

Professor Adrian Bejan has a theory based on how neurons process signals. As we age, our neural networks increase in size and complexity and, as a result, process visual information at a slower rate. That slower processing means we create fewer mental images each second than we did when we were younger, thereby making time seem to slow down.

time, time perception, science of time, aging, neural processing, youth, lifespans, female aging, woman's face over the years A woman slowly ages over about 15 years. assets.rebelmouse.io

“People are often amazed at how much they remember from days that seemed to last forever in their youth, Bejan shared with Harvard University. "It’s not that their experiences were much deeper or more meaningful; it’s just that they were being processed in rapid fire.”

In other words, processing the same number of mental images we did in our youth takes longer now, somewhat counterintuitively making time seem to pass more quickly. So goes the theory, anyway.

It might simply be about time-to-life ratios

Another popular theory about why time feels different as a child than it does as an adult is the ratio of any given day, week or year to the amount of time we've been alive. To a 5-year-old, a year is 20% of their entire life. For a 50-year-old, a year only is 0.2% of their life, so it feels like it went by much more quickly.

hands, clocks, passage of time, age aging, old age, time perception, time flies An elderly person's hands holding a small clock.Photo credit: Canva

It's also a matter of how much change has happened in that year. A year in the life of a 5-year-old is full of rapid growth and change and learning and development. A year in the life of a 50-year-old probably isn't a whole lot different than when they were 48 or 49. Even if there are major life changes, the middle-aged brain isn't evolving at nearly the same rate as a child. A 50-year-old looking back at the past year will have a lot fewer changes to process than a 5-year-old, therefore the year will seems like it went by a lot faster.

“Our perception of days, weeks, years and that kind of time seems to be especially influenced by our perspective: Are we in the moment experiencing it, or are we looking backward on time?” psychology professor Cindy Lustig told the University of Michigan.

The key to slowing it all down? Be mindful of the present moment.

Lustig has a point. When we are in the moment, our perception of time is much different than when we look back. So, being fully conscious in the present moment can help us rein in the freight train effect.

One way to do that is to be mindful of your physical existence in this moment. Feel your heart beating. Feel your breath going in and out. Cornell University psychology professor Adam Anderson, Ph.D., conducted a study that found our perception of time may be linked with the length of our heartbeats. (Study participants were fitted with electrocardiograms and asked to listen to a brief audio tone. They perceived the tone as longer after a longer heartbeat and shorter after a shorter one.) He suggests starting a stopwatch, closing your eyes and focusing on your breathing for what you think feels like a minute. Then, check your time to see how accurate your estimation was.

Breathe World Series GIF by MLB Giphy

“This can give you a sense of how much your experience of your body is related to your experience of time,” Anderson told WebMD. “It will help teach you to enjoy the pure experience of time.”

You can also use focused breathing to purposely slow down your heart rate, and thus slow down your time perception. “We show that slow heart rates—that is, a longer duration between heartbeats—dilates time, slowing it down," Anderson said.

We can also alter our perception of time by taking in novel experiences, such as traveling to new places. According to Steve Taylor, author of Making Time: Why Time Seems To Pass at Different Speeds and How to Control It, people who go on adventurous trips report that their vacations feel longer than those who choose a predictable destination. You can also make small changes to your daily routine, such as trying new foods or taking a new route home from work to take in some new stimuli and slow your perception of time.

A study in 2024 found that people who do intense exercise experience a time warp, feeling like they exercised longer than they really did, so if you want to temporarily slow down time, you can push your body hard during a workout.

- YouTube youtu.be

Finally, try to take in the world the way you did as a small child. Take note of life's wonders. Engage fully in whatever you're doing. Notice details and take mental pictures as much as you can. Time goes by fast when we're distracted, so training our attention on the here and now can help. Ultimately, we can strive to perceive time more like we did when we were little, in its full depth and magnitude instead of a narrow, straight line.

This article originally appeared last year.

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Why time seems to speed up as we age and how you can slow it down

You can't stop time but there are some hacks to slow down your perception of it.

via Jordan Benton/Canva

An hour glass and a pithy tweet.

You're going along, minding your own business on the internet, when suddenly, this little gem comes across your timeline: "1980 and 2023 are as far apart as 1937 and 1980. Sleep tight, old fogies."

Your first reaction is, "Nuh-uh, no way," so you pull out the calculator to do the math yourself—several times because you're sure you must've missed a number somewhere. You remember how long ago 1937 seemed in 1980, and there's no possible way that much time has passed between 1980 and now. Then, as the warped reality of time washes over you, you sit and stare in stunned silence, contemplating the existential crisis.

Why does time work this way? Why does it seem to get faster and faster and condense to make decades seem shorter and shorter as we age? And perhaps more importantly, how the heck do we stop time from feeling like a runaway freight train?

Here are a few theories about what creates the freight train phenomenon.

time, time perception, science of time, hour glass, aging, neural processing, youth, lifespans, oceanA hand holding an hour glass by the ocean.via Canva/Photos

Time perception is relative—and kids perceive it differently

"Time flies when you're having fun" is a saying for a reason. Time also drags when you're doing drudgery work and feels like it stands still in moments of significance. And yet the ticking of seconds as they go by doesn't change tempo. We measure it with steady, unchanging beats, but how it feels changes constantly.

This relativity exists in every passing moment, but it also exists in the bigger picture as well. The years felt like they passed by much more slowly when we were children, and by middle age, they feel like they pass in the blink of an eye. The pandemic gave us an even greater sense of this relativity as disruptions to our normal routines and the stress associated with the COVID-19 years messed with our sense of time. (On an odd side note, surveys show that our time perception during the pandemic varied a lot from place to place—people in some parts of the world felt that time moved more slowly, while others felt time moved more quickly.)

According to a 2023 Hungarian study published in Nature Scientific Reports, very young children perceive time differently than older children and adults. Researchers split 138 people into three age groups—pre-kindergarten, school-age and adults 18 and over—and showed them two videos of the same duration, one that was "eventful" and one that was "uneventful." Interestingly, the pre-K group perceived the eventful video to be longer, while the older children and adults saw the uneventful video as longer.

The way the study participants described the length of the videos in gestures was also telling. Young children were much more likely to use vertical hand gestures, connoting volume or magnitude, to indicate a length of time than the other two age groups. School-aged kids and adults tended to use horizontal gestures, indicating time as linear, increasing with age.

time, time perception, science of time, aging, neural processing, youth, lifespans, female aging, woman's face over the yearsA woman slowly ages over about 15 years.via Canva/Photos

Our neural processing slows down as we age

Professor Adrian Bejan has a theory based on how neurons process signals. As we age, our neural networks increase in size and complexity and, as a result, process visual information at a slower rate. That slower processing means we create fewer mental images each second than we did when we were younger, thereby making time seem to slow down.

“People are often amazed at how much they remember from days that seemed to last forever in their youth, Bejan shared with Harvard University. "It’s not that their experiences were much deeper or more meaningful; it’s just that they were being processed in rapid fire.”

In other words, processing the same number of mental images we did in our youth takes longer now, somewhat counterintuitively making time seem to pass more quickly. So goes the theory, anyway.

It might simply be about time-to-life ratios

Another popular theory about why time feels different as a child than it does as an adult is the ratio of any given day, week or year to the amount of time we've been alive. To a 5-year-old, a year is 20% of their entire life. For a 50-year-old, a year only is 0.2% of their life, so it feels like it went by much more quickly.

It's also a matter of how much change has happened in that year. A year in the life of a 5-year-old is full of rapid growth and change and learning and development. A year in the life of a 50-year-old probably isn't a whole lot different than when they were 48 or 49. Even if there are major life changes, the middle-aged brain isn't evolving at nearly the same rate as a child. A 50-year-old looking back at the past year will have a lot fewer changes to process than a 5-year-old, therefore the year will seems like it went by a lot faster.

“Our perception of days, weeks, years and that kind of time seems to be especially influenced by our perspective: Are we in the moment experiencing it, or are we looking backward on time?” psychology professor Cindy Lustig told the University of Michigan.

hands, clocks, passage of time, age aging, old age, time perception, time fliesAn elderly person's hands holding a small clock.via Canva/Photos

The key to slowing it all down? Be mindful of the present moment.

Lustig has a point. When we are in the moment, our perception of time is much different than when we look back. So, being fully conscious in the present moment can help us rein in the freight train effect.

One way to do that is to be mindful of your physical existence in this moment. Feel your heart beating. Feel your breath going in and out. Cornell University psychology professor Adam Anderson, Ph.D., conducted a study that found our perception of time may be linked with the length of our heartbeats. (Study participants were fitted with electrocardiograms and asked to listen to a brief audio tone. They perceived the tone as longer after a longer heartbeat and shorter after a shorter one.) He suggests starting a stopwatch, closing your eyes and focusing on your breathing for what you think feels like a minute. Then, check your time to see how accurate your estimation was.

“This can give you a sense of how much your experience of your body is related to your experience of time,” Anderson told WebMD. “It will help teach you to enjoy the pure experience of time.”

You can also use focused breathing to purposely slow down your heart rate, and thus slow down your time perception. “We show that slow heart rates—that is, a longer duration between heartbeats—dilates time, slowing it down," Anderson said.

We can also alter our perception of time by taking in novel experiences, such as traveling to new places. According to Steve Taylor, author of Making Time: Why Time Seems To Pass at Different Speeds and How to Control It, people who go on adventurous trips report that their vacations feel longer than those who choose a predictable destination. You can also make small changes to your daily routine, such as trying new foods or taking a new route home from work to take in some new stimuli and slow your perception of time.

Finally, try to take in the world the way you did as a small child. Take note of life's wonders. Engage fully in whatever you're doing. Notice details and take mental pictures as much as you can. Time goes by fast when we're distracted, so training our attention on the here and now can help. Ultimately, we can strive to perceive time more like we did when we were little, in its full depth and magnitude instead of a narrow, straight line.


- YouTubewww.youtube.com

This article originally appeared last year.

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People are freezing their old and secondhand books for this disgusting reason

"Book worms are real??!!"

Image via Canva/Jupiterimages

People who buy thrifted, secondhand and old books are shocked they need to freeze their books after buying.

Finding a treasured book at a thrift or secondhand store is a treat, and the look and feel of holding an old book is something special. Plus, they're often a good deal.

Many people who frequently buy used books are just finding out that they should be freezing their purchases. Sound weird? A little, but book lovers have a few solid, good reason for the quirky hack are spreading awareness about why they always put their secondhand books in the freezer before reading.

The main reason: it will get rid of any creepy-crawlies that may be lingering in the books. In an interview with Country Living, Lindsey Chastain, home expert and founder of The Waddle and Cluck, explained: "Freezing can get rid of booklice, silverfish, and bedbugs."

Surprisingly, bed bugs love to hide in books. According to library resource Mobius Consortium, bed bugs are usually found in the bindings of books near the spine, and often leave marks on pages. The organization notes that bed bugs may be more commonly found in hard cover books, but can also be found in paperbacks.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Booklice also thrive in books, hence their namesake. They feed on mold and fungi and eat through paper products, thereby destroying books, according to Penn State University. Like booklice, silver fish also feed on book bindings.

Besides getting rid of bugs, freezing used books can also help with preservation. According to the Northeast Document Conservation Center, freezing books can also help prevent mold growth and maintain an old book's shape and condition.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

To properly freeze books, you should not simply place them in the freezer. "Put the books in a sealed plastic bag to keep condensation from warping the pages after you take them out," Chastain told Country Living.

Used books should remain in the freezer for at least 48 hours to eradicate anything that may be lingering inside. According to Dartmouth University, the cold temperatures and oxygen deprivation will slowly but surely kill the pests.

@mychala.reads

i learned why you should freeze your thrifted books and have never been the same since 😅 #thriftedbooks #bookthrifting #secondhandbooks #booktok #bookishtips

The pro-tip had book lovers shocked. "How did I not know this was a thing?" one commented on a video shared by book lover Diya on Instagram. Another added, "Oh, this is... sincerely helpful 👏 Thank you!" Another reader wrote, "My family thinks I am crazy that I do this! Glad I am not the only one!"

And some shared their horror stories about finding critters in their books: "I always set my books on my night stand right? one day noticed TINY little crawlies all over it... book lice. MORTIFIED. had to put the night stand out in the snow for a few days. haven't seen em since.. (I am a clean person I promise)," one reader commented on a TikTok video. Another shared, "Uhh we got book lice once and never again. We freeze everything."

Others found humor in the new revelation. "Cracking open a cold one has a whole new meaning 🤯," one commented on reader Iraiter's Instagram video. Another quipped, "Cause reading is cool."

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