Man Who Lived In Cave With No Concept Of Time Experienced Unbelievable Effects On His Body Clock

If you hear that NASA is keeping an eye on your unusual experiment, it's a clear sign you've achieved significant recognition in the realm of science.

Michel Siffre, at 85 years old, certainly earned his place among esteemed scientists with his revolutionary research conducted in 1962.

He explored the human perception of time by isolating himself from the rest of the world for two months.

This level of commitment to scientific inquiry is truly extraordinary, especially in his case.

Driven by the excitement of the space race, this French explorer, adventurer, and scientist took off his wristwatch and secluded himself 130 meters underground in the depths of Scarasson, a mountain located in the Ligurian Alps, over six decades ago.

The reason behind Siffre's experiment was clear:

Armed with nothing more than a flashlight, the then-23-year-old made his temporary home next to a glacier.

He aimed to understand how the lack of external cues that signal night and day could influence our biological rhythms.

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Siffre was particularly curious about how the absence of light would impact him.

Thus, he chose to sleep and eat only when his body naturally felt the need, ignoring the usual schedules that society imposes.

Now 85, Siffre spent a remarkable total of 63 days completely alone underground for the sake of scientific exploration—and he emerged successfully, though with a heightened sensitivity to daylight.

This is because during his time living akin to a cave dweller, he uncovered astonishing insights about how humans adapt to a life devoid of any time indicators like clocks, calendars, or sunlight.

He discovered that our bodies have internal clocks, a finding that contributed to the establishment of the field now known as chronobiology.

And he made these discoveries at the age of 23, an age which many typically associate with less scholarly pursuits.

What living without time was like:

Describing his groundbreaking journey, Siffre shared with Cabinet Magazine in 2008: "This idea came to me—this idea that became the idea of my life. 

"I decided to live like an animal, without a watch, in the dark, without knowing the time. Instead of studying caves, you ended up studying time.

"Yes, I invented a simple scientific protocol. I put a team at the entrance of the cave. I decided I would call them when I woke up, when I ate, and just before I went to sleep.

"My team didn’t have the right to call me, so that I wouldn’t have any idea what time it was on the outside. Without knowing it, I had created the field of human chronobiology."

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Despite the 'bad equipment' and only a 'small camp' to sustain him, Siffre faced harsh conditions like sub-zero temperatures and high humidity but remained focused on his

He spent his time in the cave reading, writing, researching, and often daydreaming about his future.
 research.

Regarding the impacts:

He monitored his condition by performing two tests each time he communicated with his surface team: taking his pulse and conducting a personal 'psychological test'.

Siffre explained: "I had to count from 1 to 120, at the rate of one digit per second. With that test we made a great discovery: it took me five minutes to count to 120. 

"In other words, I psychologically experienced five real minutes as though they were two."

While it might seem easy to lose track of time in such conditions, it was actually a profound revelation about the effects of living without time indicators.

Siffre experienced everything at half the normal speed—so for those wishing for 'time to slow down,' a few months in a cave might just do the trick.

He only realized the extent of his time distortion when his team finally told him it was time to end the experiment, which came as a shock since he thought he still had a month to go.

"My psychological time had compressed by a factor of two," Siffre remarked.

On his theories:

He explained that he had been exploring the disconnect between psychological time and actual clock time for forty years and had developed his own theory about why this phenomenon occurred.

Siffre elaborated: "I believe that when you are surrounded by night—the cave was completely dark, with just a light bulb—your memory does not capture the time. You forget.

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"After one or two days, you don’t remember what you have done a day or two before. The only things that change are when you wake up and when you go to bed. Besides that, it’s entirely black. It’s like one long day."

Even after spending 63 days in the cave, Siffre felt compelled to return to the darkness a decade later, this time planning a six-month stay in a Texas cave.

After leading several similar underground time isolation experiments over ten years, the adventurer from Nice was curious to see how his internal clock would adjust during a longer isolation period.

He again made an incredible discovery, finding that without time cues, people tend to adapt to a 48-hour cycle instead of the standard 24-hour cycle.

NASA incorporated the insights from Siffre's studies to assist astronauts who reported similar short-term memory issues after being isolated from external time references.

As you can see, he truly is a legendary figure in the scientific community.