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Living without Time: Michel Siffre and the Internal Clock (Advanced Program) · Spotlight English: Advanced

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  Welcome to Spotlight Advanced. I'm Marina Sante and I'm Patrick Woodward. Spotlight uses
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  a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand no
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  matter where in the world they live. A group of people crowd around a
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  large hole in a rock. A rope hangs down into the hole. Soon
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  the rope moves. A man comes out of the hole, wearing a hard
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  hat and climbing equipment. The man in the hard hat has his arm around
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  another man. The first man moves very weakly and he is only just able
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  to climb. He closes his eyes as he enters into the light. It
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  is too bright for him. He has not seen the sun for six months.
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  This man's name is Michel Siffe. He is a French geologist. A
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  geologist is a person who studies the earth. But today Sife is not studying
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  the earth. Instead, he is studying how people experience time. Sife locked
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  himself away under the ground for half a year. He did not have clocks,
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  he did not have the sun to tell him when to sleep. He
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  slept as long as he needed, and he stayed awake as long as he
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  wanted. The experiment was very bad for him, It troubled him a lot,
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  but while living underground, Michele Siffe discovered something very important, the internal
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  clock. Today's spotlight is on Michell Sife and the internal clock. Sief did
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  not train to study how people experienced time. Instead, Sieff went to school
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  to be a geologist. As a young man, he explored underground and studied
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  different kinds of rocks but wonder In nineteen sixty two, seef explored a cave
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  that would change his life. He had discovered an underground glacier. The glacier
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  was in the French Alps. He was supposed to lead a trip to the
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  mountains to study the glacier. The trip was to take fifteen days, but
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  Siefe did not believe that this was enough time. He decided that he would
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  go for two months instead, and as an experiment, he would go without
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  bringing a clock. He would live in the cave alone. His goal was
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  to have no connection to time passing in the outside world. He wanted to
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  see what his body would do. Joshua Foeher is a writer. He spoke
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  to Michelle sief about his experiment. Seif said, I invented a simple scientific
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  method. I put a team at the opening of the cave. I decided
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  I would call them when I got up, when I ate, and just
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  before I went to sleep. My team did not have the right to or
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  me. I would have no idea what time it was. The cave was
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  not a great place to live, living near a glacier. See If was
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  often wet. His body temperature would get very low. It would go as
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  low as thirty four degrees celsius. He also did not have much to do.
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  He studied the glacier, He read his books and wrote in his journal,
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  but there was no one to talk to. He lived by himself and
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  lost all sense of time. See If told Joshua Foreua, there were two
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  tests I did every time I called the surface. First, I checked my
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  heart beat. Second, there was a mental test. I had to count
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  from one to one hundred twenty. I counted at a rate of one number
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  each second. With that test, we made a great discovery. It took
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  me five minutes to count to one hundred twenty. In other words, I
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  experienced five real minutes as if they were only two minutes. When two months
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  had passed, Siefe's team called him. They told him it was time to
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  leave. Seefe was very confused. He was supposed to leave on the fourteenth
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  of September, but he believed that it was only the twentieth of August.
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  He had lost twenty five days. But Sefe also discovered something even more amazing.
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  He discovered that each of us has an internal clock. This clock tells
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  our bodies when to sleep and get up. Usually, we sleep and get
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  up because of light from the sun, we live in a twenty four hour
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  sleep cycle. Sefe also lived in a cycle, but his sleep cycle was
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  twenty four and one half hours long. This proved that the sun was not
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  the only thing organizing sleep. Instead, humans have a natural cycle without the
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  sun. We sleep and get up when our bodies tell us to. Siff
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  knew that what he had discovered was very important, so he devoted his life
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  to studying this eternal body clock. In fact, he is considered the father
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  of the new field of study called chron biology. Chron Biology studies how these
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  internal cycles of time affect both mind and body. He performed many other experiments.
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  In some he sent other people into caves. They also stayed for months.
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  These people had different sleep cycles than Sief did. Instead, they developed
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  forty eight hour cycles. They would stay awake for thirty six hours, then
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  they would sleep for twelve This meant that each person's sleep cycle was different,
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  and most are longer than twenty four hours. These experiments were very important at
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  the time. Countries had just begun to send people into space, but no
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  one knew how going to space would change people. They did not know how
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  it would affect sleep. Being alone in a cave is a little like being
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  alone in space, so people going to space could prepare better for the effects
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  of traveling in space on their bodies. Then, in nineteen seventy two,
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  Sieff decided to do another experiment on himself. He would go down into a
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  cave again. He was older and he wanted to study how this changed the
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  results, but he also wanted to stay underground longer. He would live in
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  the cave for six months. Thief's six months underground affected him very differently than
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  before. Two months underground did not change him much, but the six months
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  caused him great mental disturbance. He began to fear the fungus that grew on
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  the cave walls. He feared he would catch diseases from the cave dust,
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  and he felt extremely sad. Once he was so lonely that he tried to
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  befriend a mouse. He tried to catch the mouse so he would have something
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  living to talk to, but he was not able to He killed the mouse
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  by accident. This made him so sad he thought about taking his own life,
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  but he continued with his experiments. He did not give in to his
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  sadness. By the end, he could only say a few words and it
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  was very difficult to think. Sef had everything he needed to survive, but
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  without others, his mind stopped working well. Sief's experience damaged his mind,
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  but this experiment was a success. His discoveries helped inform scientists how sleep works,
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  and he helped confirm the importance of physical touch. Being touched by other
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  people is not just nice, It is important to survive. People can survive
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  without other people for a long time, but it can be dangerous to their
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  health. After his six months stay, Sief stopped his experiments for eight years.
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  He moved away from his home in France and divorced his wife. His
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  time in the cave changed him. He needed time to recover. Soon though,
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  Sief began experimenting again, and today he is one of the most well
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  known people who study time. His experiments are still the only ones of their
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  kind. Franz Halberg is a professor at the University of Wisconsin. He also
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  studies how we experience time. In nineteen eighty eight, he spoke to the
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  Los Angeles Times about Sife. He said, some people think he's a bad
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  boy, but Sief does what no one else will do. He has by
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  far the longest records of people being alone. Others who have studied similar things
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  have done it for weeks. He has done it for months. Would you
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  live by yourself for two months? What about six months? Why? Or
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  why not? You can leave a comment on our website or email us at
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  Radio at Radio English dot net. You can also comment on Facebook at Facebook
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  dot com slash Spotlight Radio. You can also get our programs delivered directly to
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  your Android or Apple device through our free officials Spotslight English app. The writer
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  and producer of this program was Dan Christman. The voices you heard were from
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  the United Kingdom. All quotes were adapted for this program and voice by Spotlight.
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  You can listen to this program again and read it on the internet at
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  www dot Radio English dot net. This program is called Living Without Time,
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  Michelle Siefe and the internal clock. We hope you can join us again for
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  the next Spotslight program. Goodbye du