Michel Siffre

Main achievements

• In his youth, he became interested in the space race and decided to find a way to contribute. Imagining situations faced by astronauts, he noticed that some of them could play in a deep cave. This motivated him to start his experiments.
• The experience of time, two months cloistered in the abyss of Scarasson without time cues on a glacier, from July 1962. He then organized several similar underground experiments for other speleologists. In 1972, Siffre went back underground for a six-month stay in a cave in Texas. He found that without time cues, several people including himself adjusted to a 48-hour rather than a 24-hour cycle.
• The notes of his experiments were used by NASA. Several astronauts reported experiences similar to those experienced in underground experiments such as loss of short-term memory to being isolated from external time references.

  Publications

• Hors du temps. L'expérience du 16 juillet 1962 au fond du gouffre de Scarasson par celui qui l'a vécue, Julliard, 1963
• Des merveilles sous la terre, Hachette, cop. 1976
• Stalactites, stalagmites, cop. 1984
• L'or des gouffres: découvertes dans les jungles mayas, Flammarion, 1979
• Dans les abîmes de la terre, Flammarion, 1975
• La France des grottes et cavernes, Privat, 1999
• A la recherche de l'art des cavernes du pays Maya, A. Lefeuvre, 1979
• Découvertes dans les grottes mayas, Arthaud, 1993
• Beyond Time, Translated by Herma Briffault, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1964