The 25-Hour Day
By Anne Pawsey
It’s amazing what you can convince people to do in the name of science. Only last month, an Australian crackpot spent twelve days at the bottom of a lake generating his own oxygen. Now it emerges some poor fools have spent 65 days locked in a windowless room without any clocks.Researchers at Harvard Medical School have performed this bizarre experiment to investigate sleep patterns and ensure that future visitors to Mars won’t get jet lag. The Martian day is 24.6 hours long and scientists are worried that humans won’t be able to adjust their sleep patterns from our shorter Earth day, meaning they would suffer permanent jet lag.
The experiment was designed to alter the natural sleep patterns of the twelve victims - sorry… volunteers. By exposing the volunteers to pulses of really bright light, scientists were able to keep them awake for an extra hour a day - functioning on a 25 hour cycle for a month - with no apparent ill effects.
So that’s the sleep deficit sorted - only the four year journey time in zero G left for medical science before we can start visiting our nearest planetary neighbours.
For more from Anne check out her page.
Or why not try...
- Spoof - The sleep retardant properties of my ex-girlfriend
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- Strange - Strange new worlds
- News - Mission to Mars
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