of 23 Michel had founded the field ofchronobiology – the scientific study of the effect of time on biological rhythms. His experiments demonstrated for the first time the existence of a body clock that can function independently of light and dark. Before Michel’s experiment no one knew how the body’s rhythms worked, but analysis of his sleep and wake cycles revealed that regardless of the time of day, if a series of sleep and active periods were added together they always came to 24 hours and 31 minutes. This is the one clock in the body that we can precisely locate. It is in a part of the hypothalamus gland at the base of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. The neurons here oscillate constantly, providing a rhythm of just over 24 hours which is corrected by daylight. 38 Because Michel had no daylight he began doing what is known as free-running and each day he became another 31 minutes out of synch. Eventually he became so off-kilter that he was sleeping during the day rather than at night, yet his body was keeping to a surprisingly regular routine.
For his mind it was a very different matter. His perception of time had warped to the extent that every hour felt three times shorter, despite his loneliness and boredom. He would stay awake for an entire day and evening and believe he had only been conscious for a few hours. He was taking to extremes the disruption in time experience by Mrs Hoagland in her fever. In one sense time had gone quickly; he was at the end of the experiment before he knew it. But in another he had slowed the pace of time in his own mind; time had expanded for him.
After his 1962 expedition, Michel spent another 40 yearsresearching time perception, continuing to use caves rather than laboratory isolation chambers for the simple reason that some people are so fanatical about caves that they are prepared to volunteer to spend a month entombed. Sealed laboratories don’t seem to inspire the same passion. The French department of defence funded Michel’s research in the hope of finding a way for submariners to sleep just once every 48 hours. But after the end of the Cold War he found it harder to secure funding, and now Michel believes it is only mathematicians and physiologists who will be able to take the subject further. Now in his seventies his love of caves continues. Naturally he celebrated the millennium underground and like any good Frenchman took champagne and foie gras with him. But having been there for some time beforehand, on the big day his sense of timing went askew and he toasted the new millennium three and a half days late.
‘ BASICALLY I SEE time as if I’m sitting facing a wallpaper pasting table. I sit near to the right-hand edge, turned slightly sideways so that I look across and also back down the table. The paper starts close to my right hand (the present) and stretches back to the left at the extremity of the table. Ancient time is not actually on the table – like wallpaper, it is in a roll that has tumbled off the far end. I view historical time from an English perspective, in terms of reigns of monarchs. From the far left of the paper to about halfway along the table it is an actual genealogical table, showing Normans, Tudors, Stuarts etc. This stops at about 1800, with a long line running across the paper at an angle of about 15 degrees, to the far side, at 1900. There are two big, rectangular sleepers placed across the track, marking the First and Second World Wars. The far edge of the paper is the English Channel and everything beyond that is “abroad”. The map continues across the world, curving away as if on a giant globe.I notice that Burma has a sleeper marking the expulsion of King Thibaw in about 1885, in the spot otherwise reserved for Queen Victoria’s family or the declaration of the German empire.
‘Days of the week are like a simple set of five straight dominoes, with two doubles turned sideways at each end for the weekends. Again
For his mind it was a very different matter. His perception of time had warped to the extent that every hour felt three times shorter, despite his loneliness and boredom. He would stay awake for an entire day and evening and believe he had only been conscious for a few hours. He was taking to extremes the disruption in time experience by Mrs Hoagland in her fever. In one sense time had gone quickly; he was at the end of the experiment before he knew it. But in another he had slowed the pace of time in his own mind; time had expanded for him.
After his 1962 expedition, Michel spent another 40 yearsresearching time perception, continuing to use caves rather than laboratory isolation chambers for the simple reason that some people are so fanatical about caves that they are prepared to volunteer to spend a month entombed. Sealed laboratories don’t seem to inspire the same passion. The French department of defence funded Michel’s research in the hope of finding a way for submariners to sleep just once every 48 hours. But after the end of the Cold War he found it harder to secure funding, and now Michel believes it is only mathematicians and physiologists who will be able to take the subject further. Now in his seventies his love of caves continues. Naturally he celebrated the millennium underground and like any good Frenchman took champagne and foie gras with him. But having been there for some time beforehand, on the big day his sense of timing went askew and he toasted the new millennium three and a half days late.
‘ BASICALLY I SEE time as if I’m sitting facing a wallpaper pasting table. I sit near to the right-hand edge, turned slightly sideways so that I look across and also back down the table. The paper starts close to my right hand (the present) and stretches back to the left at the extremity of the table. Ancient time is not actually on the table – like wallpaper, it is in a roll that has tumbled off the far end. I view historical time from an English perspective, in terms of reigns of monarchs. From the far left of the paper to about halfway along the table it is an actual genealogical table, showing Normans, Tudors, Stuarts etc. This stops at about 1800, with a long line running across the paper at an angle of about 15 degrees, to the far side, at 1900. There are two big, rectangular sleepers placed across the track, marking the First and Second World Wars. The far edge of the paper is the English Channel and everything beyond that is “abroad”. The map continues across the world, curving away as if on a giant globe.I notice that Burma has a sleeper marking the expulsion of King Thibaw in about 1885, in the spot otherwise reserved for Queen Victoria’s family or the declaration of the German empire.
‘Days of the week are like a simple set of five straight dominoes, with two doubles turned sideways at each end for the weekends. Again
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