
First Evidence of Sleep in Flight - dnetesn
http://maxplanck.nautil.us/article/326/first-evidence-of-sleep-in-flight
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jfk13
While this may be the "first evidence" in the sense of measurements of brain
activity, swifts apparently sleeping at 10,000 feet were directly observed 100
years ago:
[https://www.rspb.org.uk/globalassets/downloads/documents/con...](https://www.rspb.org.uk/globalassets/downloads/documents/conservation
--sustainability/help-swifts/amazing-swift-facts.pdf)

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esoterae
Technically we've known for decades that humans can sleep while flying
airplanes :+/

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ilamont
_When the birds circled on rising air currents the hemisphere connected to the
eye facing the direction of the turn was typically awake while the other was
asleep, suggesting that the birds were watching where they were going. “The
frigatebirds may be keeping an eye out for other birds to prevent collisions
much like ducks keep an eye out for predators,” says Rattenborg._

Earlier it said these brief periods of sleep would start as the sun went down;
does it mean that they would only catch some sleep at dusk/twilight, or this
would continue throughout the night? And if it's at night, do the birds have
good enough night vision to see anything flying nearby or swimming on the
surface below (such as their prey, squid and flying fish)?

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jobigoud
Imagine what we could achieve if humans needed only 42 minutes of sleep per
day…

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gnulinux
I think it would give a constant time advantage. If humanity operates on
O(f(t)) in that case we would operate on O(C f(t)). That is, as opposed,
improvements that change the model itself (i.e. f) such as increased
productivity, automation, cultural shifts etc...

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jobigoud
I thought about this argument some more. Instead of spending ten times longer
awake, you could say the same for living ten times longer. It's also just a
linear increase your reasoning would apply.

But I feel that if all geniuses of history had lived 800 years they could have
achieve more and we would be further along.

It changes the model because along the way we make meta discoveries about
learning and methodology and science itself, and even just discoveries that we
build upon. That feeds back into our progress.

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tome
In business class, maybe.

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mrbonner
Could anyone ever been able to subscribe to their print edition on
shop.nautil.us? I like the look and feel of their magazines and would like to
support them. But, the subscription webpage has been broken forever. I twitted
their support staff a month ago and hasn’t heard anything yet. What a shame.

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berelig
I subscribed in early 2018 and have only received two issues since. Sometime
in the summer I received an email that they were having issues raising the
funds necessary to publish the upcoming print edition.

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mrbonner
Apparently a tough chicken and egg problem for them: not having enough money
to print so they stop accepting new subscriptions and hence will not getting
any more funding. I really want to pay for their print magazines.

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arkey
There are several other articles about this dating from 2016 [0][1]. Still,
the articles back in 2016 also come as a big surprise for me, since I remember
having a kids encyclopaedia back in 1994 [2] that had a small snippet
mentioning a certain migratory bird that travelled an insane distance and used
warm currents that generated lift to basically take a nap mid-flight. So
unless this is ruled out and not considered "flying", I really don't
understand how many "first times" there have been.

[0] [https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-just-seen-
birds...](https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-just-seen-birds-sleep-
while-flying-for-the-first-time-ever)

[1] [https://gizmodo.com/we-finally-know-how-birds-sleep-
during-f...](https://gizmodo.com/we-finally-know-how-birds-sleep-during-
flight-without-d-1784760623)

[2] Sorry, I can't provide a source at the moment, will try to find it later.

Edit: to be fair, this article is citing the ones in 2016. I found other
articles from as early as 2014 [3] but maybe this is just about how for the
first time the theory is actually based upon measured, empirical data. Like an
article that was recently in HN about semi-automatic weapons being more deadly
than non-automatic ones.

[3] [http://sabersabor.es/una-vida-de-record-los-10-hechos-
porten...](http://sabersabor.es/una-vida-de-record-los-10-hechos-portentosos-
del-vencejo/)

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ShakMR
> This article was originally published by Max Planck Neuroscience on Aug. 3,
> 2016. The relevant study can be retrieved here.

