What does the time depth isolation experiment that drives people crazy want to prove? Does time really exist?

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion online about a female designer who spent 130 days in an isolated cave and nearly went crazy. Many people say that this is an experiment to prove whether time exists. In fact, this happened a long time ago, decades ago.

When it comes to the question of whether time exists, in fact, no scientist has ever said that time does not exist, let alone prove that time does not exist. The experiment conducted by scientists is mainly to see whether humans will have time illusions without timekeeping tools, and what effects it has on physiology and psychology. Therefore, to be precise, this experiment is called the "time depth isolation experiment."

The female designer Flinni who almost had a mental breakdown

In January 1983, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) cooperated with Italian psychologist and sociologist Maurizio Montalbini to conduct a cave depth time isolation experiment. The purpose was to test a person's psychological and physiological changes and tolerance in a closed environment without timing tools. The various reference data collected can provide reference for NASA's future astronauts' deep space exploration, extraterrestrial exploration, and life in confined spaces during deep space navigation.

Stefania Forlini, a 27-year-old female designer, stood out from hundreds of volunteers and became the only test subject. Forlini is young, healthy, optimistic, and most importantly, has a good psychological quality.

The experiment was arranged in a cave, isolated from the outside world, but a constant temperature room with an area of ​​22.57 square meters was built inside. The temperature was suitable for living in it, and there were complete living and working facilities, sufficient food, a computer, and musical instruments such as guitars. Everything looked very comfortable.

The only two differences from our daily life are that there is only one person and she can only entertain herself; and there is no timekeeping tool, and no natural light to distinguish whether it is day or night, so she can only calculate the passage of time by her own feeling. There are three cameras and a distress button installed in the room, and her urine can be regularly raised for testing to understand her physical changes.

On January 13, Flini entered the cave house as planned and began her 160-day isolated life. At first, she was full of confidence and felt relaxed all of a sudden. Without the hustle and bustle of the city and the burden of work, she had complete freedom of time, eating when she wanted, sleeping when she wanted, playing when she wanted, and it was nothing more than a little solitude. This must be a very pleasant vacation.

At the beginning, it was just as Flinny had imagined. He ate and drank his fill, played the guitar or did some gymnastics, listened to music and read books. He also made many exquisite shapes with art paper, painted stars and the moon on the windows, made bread and wine. Everything was so comfortable and going smoothly. The only thing was the silence. Without making any noise, he could hear his own breathing and heartbeat.

She slept until she woke up naturally, followed her biological clock and tried to live a rhythmic life. She also recorded her days by feeling. After a few weeks, she thought she was roughly following a 24-hour schedule, but researchers outside found that she was losing her sense of time, going to bed later and later, and the duration of her sleep varied, gradually reversing her day and night with the world outside the cave.

A few weeks later, her period, which was supposed to come, didn't come, and then it stopped. Sometimes, she only slept for 2 hours, but she thought she had slept all night and got up to work energetically; sometimes she slept for more than ten hours, but she thought she didn't sleep for long and fell asleep. Later, he slept more and more, and his mood became more and more anxious.

Through monitoring, the researchers found that her emotions became increasingly unstable and she became irritable and restless. The slightest noise would frighten her, veins bulged on her body, and she often gasped for breath. Her work and rest schedule also became increasingly chaotic. The longest sleep duration was 22 hours, and she did not feel tired even after working for 20 hours.

The researchers felt that the experiment had obtained enough data. Although Flinny herself still insisted on not withdrawing, considering the possible impact on her body, they stopped the experiment and took Flinny out of the cave.

And Flini was indeed on the verge of a mental breakdown. When she came out of the cave, she was pale, had lost 7 kilograms, had a serious deviation in her judgment of time, was partially mentally damaged, and was very weak. The researchers took Flini a retaliatory rest for 3 days before letting her see the sun after a long absence.

When the researchers asked her how long she felt she had been in the cave, she replied about 60 days, while the research record was 130 days. Her biological clock felt like it was more than twice the actual time, which shows how badly disrupted her biological clock had been.

Michelle Schiff's Cave Time Isolation Experiment

Similar time isolation experiments have been conducted by researchers from various countries around the world, including the French geologist Michel Siffre.

In 1962, Michel Schiff entered a closed cave and lived there without any timing tools. He calculated the time based on his own feelings. When he left, there were 36 days of records in his notebook, so he thought he left the cave on August 20. But in fact, the real date was September 14, 25 days more than his own record.

Later, Schiff conducted another 6-month isolation experiment in Texas, USA. The original plan was to last 210 days, but due to the increasingly incredible fear, he had to terminate it early and barely lasted to 205 days. The process of the experiment began to become terrifying at the 6th week. Unknowingly, a day became more than 36 hours, and even 48 hours, but he was completely unaware. Fear continued to grow in his heart, but he didn't know where the fear came from.

He had wanted to quit a long time ago, but considering that he had been pursuing the time isolation experiment for his entire life and had barely made it to 205 days, if he didn't come out, he would have a mental breakdown. Of course, the time he recorded for this experiment was much less than the actual time.

The world record is still held by Maurizio Montalbini

After helping NASA with Follini's cave time isolation experiment, Montalbini personally conducted an experiment in December 1987, staying in the cave for 210 days, five days longer than Hill, setting a world record. This time he made a crude time measurement device himself, a bottle with a small hole in it, so that water could flow down the rock wall.

He used his own timer to record the passage of time and thought that 79 days had passed. At this time, people outside the cave informed him in Morse code that he had broken the world record. He picked up the emergency phone and talked to the outside world for the first time in more than 200 days. He said that he missed his friends, family and the taste of cheese. Here, he wrote three short stories and a diary titled "Where the Sun Sleeps".

This time, although he ate a lot of high-calorie foods such as honey and chocolate in the cave, and also took so-called pills (similar to the food astronauts eat during space flight), he still lost 33 pounds. He also smoked 406 packs of cigarettes, which may have damaged his body.

In 1988, Montalbini also led a 14-member expedition team to stay in an underground cave for 48 days; from 2006 to 2007, he conducted a cave isolation experiment that broke his own record, staying in the cold cave base of the Apennines for 235 days. Unfortunately, in September 2009, this cave time explorer died of a heart attack at the age of 56. His colleagues claimed that Montalbini's death had nothing to do with the previous record-breaking cave stay.

These time isolation experiments all prove one thing, that is, time exists objectively, and the subjective time scale that humans have formed is matched with the human biological clock. If the time scale standard is lost, the human biological clock will be disordered, leading to severe anxiety and panic, and may eventually lead to a mental breakdown.

Time isolation experiments are still ongoing

There is no final and complete scientific conclusion on the impact of time isolation on humans, and more evidence is needed, so this experiment is still ongoing.

On March 14 of this year, a French organization called the Institute of Human Adaptation launched another deep time isolation activity. They asked 15 volunteers from all walks of life to enter a huge cave in the Pyrenees and live together for 40 days without any timing device.

These volunteers all wear various sensors, which transmit their brain waves, heart rate, body temperature and other relevant data to the scientific team outside the cave at any time. After the experiment, they can use these data changes to deduce the various impacts people have in this special environment and time isolation state, thus finding the answer to the time mystery that has plagued mankind for many years.

I have not found any information or reports on the final results of this experiment.

Some people scoff at this experiment, thinking it is just someone's whim and meaningless. This view is wrong. Humans are constantly exploring the world, and they also need to explore themselves. In fact, there are still many mysteries about themselves that humans have not yet solved, including the extent to which the lack of a time scale affects the biological clock, which is still under exploration.

Again, cosmic time exists objectively. No matter if people have timekeeping tools or watch the day and night, time is there and passes slowly. The concrete time is the change of matter, including the metabolism of every cell in the human body, life and death. Without time, all of this will freeze and vanish.

Therefore, all the explorers of the time isolation experiments mentioned above never aimed to prove the existence of time, but to see what humans would be like without time markers. The results of the experiments showed that not only is time omnipresent, but without the time scale markers formed by humans over a long period of time, humans' biological clocks would be disrupted and they would not be able to survive.

So, do you think time exists or does it not exist now? Thanks for reading and welcome to discuss.

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