Fourteen volunteers have been locked up, without natural light, for twelve days in the Lombrives cave.

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Human Adaptation Institute

  • The fourteen volunteers of the "Deep time" experience, locked in the cave of Lombrives, in Ariège, without natural light, neither smartphone nor watch, gave their news on Friday.

  • Having no exchange with the outside world, the leader of this expedition, Christian Clot, transmitted news of his team on March 23, via the entry airlock.

  • The explorer-researcher explains that he is entering his ninth cycle, the days of team members being counted in cycles corresponding to a period of awakening and a period of sleep.

It has been twelve days since they saw the light of day and were cut off from the world.

The fourteen volunteers of the "Deep time" experience, locked in the cave of Lombrives, in Ariège, without natural light, neither smartphone nor watch, gave their news on Friday.

They are reassuring for the six women and eight men, aged 29 to 50, who accepted this 40-day experience to see in particular how the brain adapts to such a situation.

Having no exchange with the outside world, the leader of this expedition, Christian Clot, transmitted news of his team on March 23, via the entry airlock.

The explorer-researcher explains that he is entering his ninth cycle.

Without access to time or to the sun, their "day" is in fact counted in a cycle corresponding to a period of awakening and a period of sleep.

Each member has their own cycle

“It's 9 cycles in my opinion that we entered the Lombrives cave,” says Christian Clot.

And already, we realize that the experience will be engaged, fabulous, as much as very complicated to live.

The debut in the cave went well.

We found there our "place of life", installed in recent weeks by a fabulous team of volunteers and professionals, where is located everything we need to live: with a kitchen, a dining area, sufficient food and the equipment necessary for our life underground.

A little over 800 meters away, totally isolated from the noise of the living space, are our "homes", individual tents, and a little further the science space, made up of a tent and a "shelter. scientist "isolated from humidity to carry out our most complex experiments, with computers specially prepared to give no schedule".

The researcher thus underlines the daily difficulty of living with 100% humidity, with temperatures oscillating between 10.2 and 10.7 ° C.

The first cycles were very intense with the organization of living and working spaces and numerous tests of scientific protocols to be carried out.

Very quickly, the first discrepancies appeared since the rule is that each member of the team must live at their own pace (sleep or eat when the need arises) while participating in collective and scientific tasks.

Preparation for scientific work

“The differences between the first cycles were attenuated by the desire to stay in a group as well as possible, with natural resynchronizations each time,” explains the explorer.

But over time, this turns out to be less and less possible.

And if I'm in my 9th sleep / wake cycle, others are in their 10th, 7th or 8th.

We don't know if we're awake at 3 p.m., 8 p.m. or more, but we clearly don't have the same biological or mental timings.

There is always at least one person awake in the cave.

An involuntary 3x8 shape that nevertheless follows everyone's rhythms.

The whole question now is to know if, at the rate of the cycles, we will manage to find a collective synchronization, if this will only be done in small groups or on the contrary if we will never succeed during our 40 days of our life under Earth ".

The "voluntary prisoners" continue their activities of preparation for rope techniques and exploration, in order to begin other work complementary to cognitive and human sciences, such as the 3D topography of the cave, the study of fauna or inscriptions. cave murals.

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