THE JETLAG EXPERIMENTS

(A link to the FAA presentation is provided at the bottom of this page.)

SUMMARY:  Every year over 100 million passengers fly internationally in and out of the U.S. - many will experience jetlag.  Jetlag affects your mood, your ability to concentrate, your sleep cycles, your physical and mental performance, and even impairs your immune system.  The symptoms are worse the farther you travel, more severe when flying east than west, and mostly absent when flying north and south. Jetlag is described by the medical community as resulting from the body's internal circadian clock being thrown out of sync relative to the destination time zone - a disruption in the timing of normal eating, sleeping, and light exposure. However, while timed light exposure can help increase the speed of re-entrainment, it does not completely remedy the situation, suggesting there may be a more fundamental cause.  We believe there might be a dynamic explanation for jetlag. 

The Jetlag Experiments will test for an entirely new explanation - a dynamic one coupled to an asymmetry that exists in the velocity and acceleration environment relative to the spinning frame of the Earth.  The 2025 experiments will be spearheaded by THE COPERNICAN PROJECT in Berkeley in collaboration with an international team of biologists and advising space-scientists from NASA/Ames, the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, the University of Florida, the University of Westminster, and the Guy Foundation.

SCIENTIFIC BASIS: Many biological properties, from circadian and circalunar rhythms to basal metabolic rates and chirality, have the potential to be more naturally explained when Earth’s underlying dynamics are included.  Jetlag is one such effect. But to understand the conjecture, we must back away from the microscope and consider the dynamics of jet travel relative to the spinning frame of the Earth, per the diagram below:

When we travel in a jet plane, we move at roughly 250 meters-per-second relative to the ground. However, relative to Earth’s center-of-mass rest frame, the ground is already spinning from west to east with a rotational velocity of 465 meters-per-second (at the equator). Thus, our net velocity is 715 meters-per-second when traveling east but only 215 meters-per-second when traveling west. Because centripetal acceleration is a function of the square of our net velocity, , the acceleration experienced in a jet plane is almost 2.5 times higher when travelling east relative to the acceleration our body has adapted to when at rest, and it is decreased by a factor 5 when travelling west. By comparison, little change in acceleration is experienced when travelling north or south along meridian lines. NASA facilitated experiments have demonstrated that metabolic systems become entrained to their local acceleration environment and when that environment is altered, it produces stress even at the genomic level.  Thus, while severe acceleration changes result in mechanical damage to a cell, the conjecture we are testing is that the much smaller acceleration changes experienced during jet travel allows most of our metabolic processes to remain undamaged, but it causes them to operate at either a slightly accelerated or decelerated pace. Over long flights our metabolism simply becomes phase shifted, resulting in jetlag.  

HISTORICAL BASIS: Although we can’t easily observe the small dynamic asymmetry in lab frames when observing biological events under a microscope, in the early 1900’s, Lorand Eötvös and a German team from the Institute of Geodesy observed just such an asymmetry in a larger venue (Persson, 2005). They observed how gravitational readings taken aboard a boat travelling eastward were lower than when the boat was moving westward and identified the difference as a consequence of the rotation of the Earth. While the formula didn’t find its way into our biology books, Eötvös derived an equation applicable to any mass moving relative to Earth’s spinning surface which more properly describes molecular weights within an organism and is has been used by geodesists ever since.

Physics leaves little doubt that a difference in acceleration exists during east-west travel - and that the effect is several hundred times larger when traveling in a jet plane than in a ship.  The unique geometric signature is consistent with the observed nature of jetlag, however, the possible biological connection has yet to be explored. 

STRATEGY: Our experimental strategy is simple: place identically cultured organisms in controlled environments then simultaneously send them by jet towards distant destinations to the north, south, east, and west, and perform comprehensive OMIC analysis to compare the results.  If there is a dynamic connection underlying jetlag, we intend to discover it.  If you have scientific insight that will improve the success of this project, please
 contact us through this link.

COLLABORATION & SPONSORSHIP: The Jetlag Experiments offer a unique opportunity to investigate a phenomenon of interest both to biologists and to a wide range of world travelers. Jetlag has been an enigma for half a century, and despite the absence of a full explanation, established medical research still tends to avoid pursuing new ideas (see the note from the Aerospace Medical Association below). We believe the results of these experiment have the potential to advance our understanding about fundamental cellular energy exchange processes at their extreme limits - providing essential insight not only about jetlag but about how circadian and chronobiological order is established within all Earthbound organisms. We are looking for corporate or private sponsors who can lend their jet transportation and technical support to this important science project and for biotech labs who can provide the OMIC work, post transport.  To participate in this experiment, please contact us through this link.

Full Disclosure

In late 2024, the FAA invited us to present these ideas to their New and Emerging Aeronautical Research (NEAR) community. That presentation was received very well. (A powerpoint copy can be found here: FAA on 10.15.24 - if you would like us to present it directly to you via zoom, send us a request). However, we also submitted a request to the Aerospace Medical Association to present a summary of our experiment to possible collaborators during their 2025 annual meeting (Abstract ID# 13734 entitled "EXPERIMENTAL SEARCH FOR A DYNAMIC BASIS OF JETLAG"). That request was declined with the following explanation provided:

“Conclusion: In summary, while the idea of a dynamic east-west asymmetry affecting jet lag through the Coriolis or Eötvös effects is intriguing, it is not currently recognized as a significant factor in the scientific understanding of jet lag. Your research would represent exploratory work into an area where little if any established scientific consensus exists. If your hypothesis were to be supported by empirical evidence, it could indeed have profound implications for understanding the biological impacts of travel direction and acceleration, but as of now, it remains in the realm of conjecture.”

This points to the heart of our mission: to engage in experiments which may have “profound implications” but where “little if any scientific consensus exists" - that’s the roadmap to progress…