Spanish athlete locked herself inside a 230-foot-deep cave for 500 days in an unusual experiment. When she came out, she thought only 160 days had passed

Spanish endurance athlete and mountaineer Beatriz Flamini spent 500 days alone inside a cave 230 feet beneath the Earth's surface without sunlight, clocks or direct human contact, all in the name of science. The unprecedented experiment was designed to understand how prolonged isolation affects the human brain, body and perception of time. Cut off from the outside world since November 2021, Flamini lived in complete solitude until emerging in April 2023. What surprised both her and researchers was not her ability to survive the ordeal but her distorted sense of time. Flamini believed she had spent only about 160 days underground, unaware that 500 days had actually passed.

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