10 Shades and Total Darkness: The volunteers returned after 40 days of isolation in a French cave

The group was voluntarily in the cave, where the temperature was only 10 degrees and it was complete darkness. The idea for the experiment was to find out how they would deal with this unusual situation.

“It is very hot,” the Associated Press quoted one of the participants as saying. The participants were locked up in Lombrives Cave near Andorra.

Dependence on the biological clock

There they had to dispense with the telephone and other means of communication, without a clock and without daylight. They also did not get rest and had to generate electricity themselves on a bike.

Group members had to rely on their biological clocks to determine when to eat, drink and sleep. They didn’t count the number of days, but the number of times they went to sleep.

Another ten days

That count didn’t go well: the group believed they would have to stay another 10 days. A large portion of the participants wanted to return to the cave to complete the experiments they had started.

The results of the experiment could say something about the ability of humans to adapt in a situation of isolation, such as the Corona pandemic, for example.

The experiment was also criticized: Scientists indicate that there is no control group to compare the results with.