Have you ever wondered how you would feel if you disconnected from our superconnected world and hid in a cave for a few weeks? Fifteen people in France already know the answer, the Associated Press reported, quoted by BTA.
After 40 days of voluntary isolation in a dark, damp and deep cave, eight men and seven women who participated in a scientific experiment returned to normal life on Saturday after the end of their self-isolation in the Pyrenees.
–
Photo: Human Adaptation Institute via AP / BTA
–
The group had been living in Lombriv Cave in recent weeks with no idea of the weather. They were without clocks and sunlight in the cave, where the temperature is 10 degrees Celsius and the relative power is one hundred percent. The inhabitants of the cave, aged 27 to 50, had no contact with the outside world, did not know what was happening with the pandemic, did not communicate with family or friends. Volunteers, including a jeweler, a doctor, a math teacher, alone they extracted water from a depth of 45 meters and produced electricity with a pedal generator.
For 40 days and nights they were alone in the cave. Now these creatures of darkness, which the volunteers have become, will have to wear special glasses to protect their eyes from daylight.
–
Photo: Human Adaptation Institute via AP / BTA
–
Researchers at the Institute for Human Adaptation, who run the Deep Time project for more than a million euros, say the experiment will help understand how people adapt to drastic changes in living conditions and environments, which is especially true in a pandemic from the new coronavirus.
In partnership with laboratories in France and Switzerland, the scientists watched the volunteers’ sleep, their social interaction, behavioral reactions through sensors. One of these sensors is a small thermometer in a capsule, which the participants in the experiment swallowed as a pill. The capsule measures body temperature and transmits the data to a computer until it is expelled naturally from the body.
The participants in the experiment followed their biological clocks to wake up, fall asleep and eat. The days were not measured in hours, but in sleep cycles.
–
Photo: Human Adaptation Institute via AP / BTA
–
On Friday, scientists tracking the volunteers entered the cave for the first time since the experiment began. They reported that most of the participants miscalculated the time spent in the cave and thought they had another week or ten days until the end of the experiment.
“It’s really interesting to watch the band sync,” said project director Christian Chloe in a recording made in the cave. A big challenge was organizing and carrying out joint activities without regard to time, he said.
–
Photo: Human Adaptation Institute via AP / BTA
–
Although the participants looked visibly tired, two-thirds of them expressed a desire to stay in the cave a little longerto be able to complete the expedition’s projects, Benoit Movio, one of the project’s scientists, told the Associated Press.
–
