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Sleep cycles

Author
Teinyhr
Ourumur
#1 - 2017-05-22 11:34:35 UTC
Seeing how people in EVE universe lived for thousands of years on planets with varying lengths of day and night and orbital periods - would they have developed different kinds of sleep cycles, where some people can get by with just few hours of sleep or where some people stay awake for days but also sleep for a whole day, or any variant you can think of? Or is fifteenish thousand years too short of a time to adjust such biological basics?
Mizhir
Devara Biotech
#2 - 2017-05-22 12:24:40 UTC
Well that is certainly a good question. Haven't really thought of it before.

I believe it should be possible to adjust the cycle plus minus a few hours. The human inner clock is actually tuned to 25 hours, but the light of day/night cycles seem to be able to adjust that so we can do 24 hour cycles. XKCD also mentioned the 28 hour day however I am not sure if that has ever been put in practice.

As for staying awake for days. I highly doubt it is possible. Fifteenish thousand years is nothing when it comes to evolution.

❤️️💛💚💙💜

Skyrixx
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#3 - 2017-05-23 17:35:24 UTC
They could just arbitrarily pick a sleep schedule if it was too difficult to adapt. I was stationed on submarines for a while and we changed our day cycle to an 18 hour day split into 3 sections. Sleep/on watch/off-watch. Especially in a space faring society its possible they just dont use the sun as a sleep cycle keeper unless its convenient.
Dromindine
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#4 - 2017-05-25 05:28:07 UTC
This is a great question to ponder 🤔. The human circadian clock is a physical response to light and dark. Organic. If you remove this from, light and dark cycle, will the human body adapt to more harsh enviroments to sleep cycles?? Time is relevant only to the sense of cycling light and darkness. If there is no cycle how do we justify time? No time, no rhythmic sleep.
Elmund Egivand
Tribal Liberation Force
Minmatar Republic
#5 - 2017-05-26 01:59:38 UTC
Skyrixx wrote:
They could just arbitrarily pick a sleep schedule if it was too difficult to adapt. I was stationed on submarines for a while and we changed our day cycle to an 18 hour day split into 3 sections. Sleep/on watch/off-watch. Especially in a space faring society its possible they just dont use the sun as a sleep cycle keeper unless its convenient.


It's possible that they simulated the sun cycle in places that see near-permanent human residency. Wouldn't be surprising considering the tech we see them having.

A Minmatar warship is like a rusting Beetle with 500 horsepower Cardillac engines in the rear, armour plating bolted to chassis and a M2 Browning stuck on top.

Faulker Gath'nor
The Gold Angels
Sixth Empire
#6 - 2017-05-30 09:55:08 UTC
This puts me to mind of the condition some blind people deal with, disrupted sleep/wake cycles... "Non-24" I think I heard it called... perhaps this is an odd template to consider for a space farer, but there are some parallels. For any pilots that stay pod-bound most of the time, they might suffer from similar effects and even more extreme possibilities given the stresses being placed on the "organic system" of a capsuleer.

On the other hand, it may be easy to imagine that such issues have been ironed out, given the very advanced state of medicine and it's associated technologies. Any practice or policy put into effect to deal with things like this would be based on what was ultimately best for the ship's survival, and frankly I think most pilots would choose to impose a proven effective practice that minimized the negative effects of fatigue.

There is a lot to consider about this question, and I honestly had not thought about it until now... good question, bravo!
Telegram Sam
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#7 - 2017-06-01 00:35:31 UTC
What a great question and thing to ponder about Teinyhr.

A long time ago I was a volunteer in a village on an island in Micronesia. The work day for the males was based on tides. Low tide was no good, your boat or raft would be sitting on a mudflat, and many meters away from the waterline. Also, fish weren't very active during low tide. Wave action wasn't stirring things up and moving food around.

So, the work day was based more on tides (lunar cycles) than on sunlight (cyclidian cycles). Guys could shift their sleep schedules to match when they needed to work, and when they should sleeping to get ready for a long day or long night of work. No problem sleeping all day or all night for them, really. Matching that was tough for me, because I taught in the village school, and followed a clock/circadian sleep cycle. My schedule was determined by a clock. Theirs were determined by lunar cycles. They seems to do OK at it.

And not too long ago, some researchers found a study about peasant farmers in France around 1700. The scientist recording about them back said that their work and sleep patterns depended on the season.
-During the spring planting season, they worked hard, and went home and went to bed early.
-During the summer growing season, they worked less and just tended crops, and spent more time going to festivals, church, etc. during the longer daylight hours.
-In the fall, they worked like hell, many hours per day, to bring in every scrap of the harvest and get it preserved for later eating.
-During the long, cold, dark winters, they kind of hibernated in their cottages. That was partly to preserve food and heating fuel. Less activity, less calories burned, less heating of open spaces needed. They'd just wake up at some traditional times, have meals together, stir around and gather stored food and fuel, go to church on Sunday and greet neighbors, etc. But most of the day and night was spent sleeping.

So, from those two, I'd speculate that humans in New Eden would be able to adapt their sleep patterns to match the patterns of the planets they live on and grew up on. And that the local societies would have traditions and lifestyles evolved to match the local sun cycle and local moon/moons cycles. What might be difficult could be having to adapt to working on an 'external clock' schedule. For example, a universal CONCORD clock, or the sleep cycles external visitors/administrators/business people run on and expect. And considering New Eden people and the emphasis on commerce and being brutally self-serving, that might happen quite a bit. A lot of room for speculating about a world as a setting for a story, I'd think.