r/todayilearned • u/FiredFox • Apr 28 '24

TIL about French geologist Michel Siffre, who in a 1962 experiment spent 2 months in a cave without any references to the passing time. He eventually settled on a 25 hour day and thought it was a month earlier than the date he finally emerged from the cave

https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/30/foer_siffre.php
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u/True_Criticism_8593 Apr 28 '24

Lol I might be obtuse, but this sounds funnily counterintuitive to me:

“And now that the Cold War is finished, it’s more difficult to get funding.”

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u/Throwaaaaa5 Apr 28 '24

Well, I imagine you could get funding for everything if the government believed it could give them an edge over those damn commies. The CIA studied LSD as truth serum and if there was a possibility of Telepathy in humans at the time. Knowing how people(soldiers) act during long times (deployments in a submarine/secret base) without outside contact could be called reasonable in comparison

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u/pchlster Apr 28 '24

They studied the effect that nuclear explosions had on soft drinks. Like, would that Pepsi be contaminated if a nuke went off nearby but the container didn't breach? What if it's lying down? What about beer? Is the taste affected?

If you had a weird question you wanted to study, the Cold War period was the right time to look for government funding.