Scientists tried to find out the essence of time through direct definition, but these attempts failed. However, in these attempts, one experiment subverted people's cognition. Scientists gathered many volunteers around the world to live in caves, isolated from the outside world, and one of them stayed in caves for 130 days. What was the result?
"Time" experiment
The experiment started from 1989 65438+ 10/3, and was led by an Italian psychologist: Mauricio Montalbini. The purpose of this experiment is to put the participants in a closed environment completely isolated from the outside world, not knowing the passage of time, and to explore the changes of the human body at this time, including the application research of biological rhythm, immune system, attention span disorder and sleep state. This study will help scientists understand the changes of human body when astronauts travel in space for a long time in the future.
In order to better simulate the situation in outer space, people involved in experimental design have made many very anti-human designs. They built a closed room in a cave tens of meters underground, with an area of only 18 square meter. This room is completely isolated from the outside world. There are no cell phones or computers here. Among them, the key design is to eliminate all possible timing tools, leaving only lights and some necessary instruments. The only thing that can communicate with the outside world here is a small screen. Volunteers can only use this screen to communicate with the outside world if they give up.
Volunteers who take part in this experiment can spend any time in this closed space. They sleep whenever they want, eat whenever they want, and entertain whenever they want. Of course, these entertainments can only be for yourself.
Based on these basic settings, scientists began to recruit volunteers to participate in this experiment. There are indeed many people who express their willingness to participate, but it is difficult to stick to it. During the whole experiment, only one woman named Stephanie persisted and stayed in the cave for 130 days before finally giving up.
Therefore, Stephanie's participation is of great significance to this experiment, and her relevant data has become the main basis for scientists to study this topic. So how did Stephanie spend this 130 day?
130 days in Stephanie's cave
At first, Stephanie lived a very regular life in the cave. She either studies, exercises, eats and sleeps, and everything seems to be very regular, as if it were not affected by the lack of timing tools. Not only that, Stephanie's ability to grasp time is better than ordinary people, and her initial time planning is more accurate, which makes her arrange everything in an orderly way.
However, the good times did not last long. As the experiment went on, it was difficult for Stephanie to clearly grasp how long she slept. According to the records of the experimental observers, sometimes she slept for a while, and sometimes she slept for a long time. The confusion of sleep time has completely disrupted the original regular life. After the rhythm was broken, Stephanie completely lost control of time and had physical and psychological problems. First of all, her physiological period did not follow the normal situation. Secondly, there is also a problem with her spirit, and the whole person is almost in a state of collapse.
So, 130 days later, she couldn't hold on any longer, so she gave up and walked out of the cave. When she climbed out of the cave, she found that her estimate of time was far from the truth. She thought she had only stayed in the cave for two months, but in fact she stayed for more than four months, which was actually more than she estimated 1 times. It can be said that Stephanie's recovery ability is far superior to others, which makes the experiment go smoothly and scientists get enough data from it.
Time exists?
From the experiment, we can easily see that when human beings cut off all contact with the outside world, it is difficult to perceive the existence of time. The scientific community can't define time directly, but only through measurement. This definition is the periodic change of time. Imagine if everything was still, time would be meaningless. The reason why human beings can feel the passage of time is because they can see the changes of these things and measure them with certain tools. But the question is, is the change of everything time itself?
Actually, you can't say that yet. Therefore, some scientists think that time may not exist, or time itself is meaningless. Some scientists believe that the passage of time is probably just a human perception or illusion.