A woman who lost track of time while living 130 days alone in Lost Cave reacted with disbelief, then delight, when told her time underground was almost over.
Stefania Follini was to emerge into the blazing New Mexico sun Tuesday to end an isolation experiment conducted by scientists to learn how people may experience the long solitude of interplanetary travel.Researchers spoke with Follini, an Italian interior decorator, on Monday to announce the end of the experiment.
"Are you really serious?" she replied through the computer linking her to a house trailer above the cave.
The temperature in Carlsbad was 100 degrees Monday, compared with the cave's constant climate of 74 degrees and 99 percent humidity.
Follini, 27, will be poked with needles and tagged with electrodes in coming weeks while scientists try to figure out what happened to her body and mind during the four months and 10 days she spent 30 feet underground.
In the absence of night, day or timepieces, Follini's menstrual cycle stopped and her sleep-wake cycle changed radically. She tended to stay up 20 to 25 hours at a time, sleeping about 10 hours.
Researchers believe her muscle tone and the level of calcium in her bones decreased, that her immune system is depressed and that she is able to concentrate more deeply.
Follini kept up strength and flexibility during her mole-like existence by doing calisthenics and judo, and maintained her mental poise by reading and decorating her 10-square-foot plastic-enclosed living area.
Without the sun and other people, time passed quickly for Follini. She believed that two months had passed instead of four, and was shocked when experiment coordinator Maurizio Montalbini notified her by computer that the experiment was almost over.
Montalbini assured her he was serious, then wrote: "We will not ask you for any more data." She had been asked to perform physical and mental tests periodically.
Then, while journalists watched her on a television monitor, Follini heard a human voice other than her own. It was from the man upstairs.
"Stefania, I am your God, talking to you," Montalbini said over an intercom.
She looked at a camera, laughed, and said: "I didn't think you would find me down here."
Follini spoke briefly with the other Italian researchers, then remarked that when she heard Montalbini's voice for the first time, "the feeling she had was like when the alarm clock goes off on Monday morning," interpreter Rita Fraschini said.
After a brief respite, life as a guinea pig will resume for Follini.
On Memorial Day, she has a date with University of Texas Medical School researchers in Houston for electro-encephalogram brain scans and performance tests, said Dr. Jon DeFrance, an assistant professor at the medical school.
DeFrance's team will attach electrodes to her head while she performs computerized tests of mental acuity and concentration. They did similar tests while Follini was in the cave, but in Houston researchers will be able to watch how specific parts of her brain function while she's solving problems. Researchers will perform the same tests again in six months.
Other scientists will draw blood and inspect her in other ways to monitor her immune system, bones, muscles and coordination.
"I hope with this research to find a way to prepare people going in space or submarines," Montalbini said.