Timetank – The Mutewatch Blog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of my life’s many pleasures is experiments. I enjoy experiments very much. I enjoy reading about them, I enjoy participating in them and I enjoy retelling them.

I have almost never found an experiment not vehemently proclaiming its own importance but this one of which I’m about to write is most definitely very famous. You can’t find one book on the issue of time and time perception that doesn’t somehow refer to this man with the electroded face. His self-inflicted experiments helped found the field of human chronobiology, a branch of biology that concerns itself with natural physiological rhythms, and he is, quite naturally, very important.

His name is Michel Siffre and he is a French speleologist. On the 16^th of July 1962, merely 23 years old he decided to step 130 meters down into the abyss of Scarassson, a pitch-dark cave in the Alps outside of Nice. He wanted to see  how the body and mind would react to a constant lack of outside stimulants and time indicators.

“I decided to live like an animal, without a watch, in the dark, without knowing the time.”

The cave was very cold and damp and his feet were often wet. He had a battery-powered lamp and spent most of his time reading,  spelunking or in a folding chair staring into complete darkness. To remove the temptation of abandoning the experiments  his assistants had taken away the ladder and he was completely alone apart from the little critters that so often dwell in caves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He had developed a system for keeping protocol. Every time he woke up, ate and just before he went to sleep he would call his assistants waiting at the entrance of the cave and taking notes. His team was not allowed to call him so that he would never know what time it was.

According to his diary he found parts of the experience harrowing, the lack of time indicators confused his perception of time. What he thought to be a quick nap could last for 8 hours and when the experiment finished, on the 14^th of September, he became surprised at the submission of the ladder, as he believed it was only the 20^th of August.

What they discovered was extraordinary. Siffre’s time confusion was purely psychological. His body had adapted to the surroundings and he lived on a timely cycle of 24 hours and 30 minutes. He was usually awake for 16 hours and slept for 8. Most importantly they had discovered that the human body had an internal clock independent of the natural/terrestrial day light cycle. Subjects of later experiments achieved 48 hour cycles, spending 36 hours active followed by 12-14 hours of sleep. This was of interest to the French army who were interested in the possibility of doubling the wakeful activities of soldiers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 1972 he re-did his experiment in the Midnight Cave, Texas, to see if he could catch the 48 hours cycles. He did sporadically, and what is interesting is that he didn’t experience these cycles any differently from his 24 hour ones. When all indicators disappeared so did the experience of time.

Siffre began his experiments during the cold war when France had begun its nuclear submarine programme and t needed to know how to organize the submariners sleep cycles and he received a lot of funding from the French army. There are still a number of questions surrounding the reasons of altered sleep/wake cycles, but according to Siffre the end of the cold war and the increase of scientific ethics panels has made it much more difficult to get funding for these kinds of experiments.

Despite decreased public interest Siffre still spend a lot of his time in caves. Ten years ago he rang in the new millenium three and a half days late in the Clamouse cave, 905 meters beneath the surface of the earth.

by Fredrik

This is a repost. This post was first published on the 2 of May 2010.