Love sleeping? Well we have your dream job.
That Monday feeling, where you have to peel yourself away from the loving, warm embrace of your comfortable bed. This feeling:
Will be a thing of the past. And what’s more, you’ll be getting paid for it.
Researchers at France’s space medical institute are seeking volunteers to spend 60 days lying on their backs, doing absolutely nothing other than staying in bed – and they’ll pay you €16,000 (£14,000) for the privilege.
They’re looking to study the effects of microgravity, with Dr Arnaud Beck, experiment coordinator, explaining: “The idea of this study is to reproduce the weightlessness of the International Space Station (ISS),” but you don’t care about that, you just want to know how you can apply.
Well, they’re looking for 24 ‘fit and sporty males’ aged between 20 and 45 who do not smoke, have no allergies and have a maximum BMI of between 22 and 27. It’s also not quite as simple as arriving at the Institute for Space Medicine and Physiology, near Toulouse and settling yourself into your new office – aka your bed – and getting to ‘work’, you’ll have to complete a load of tests lasting two weeks before and after your stint in bed.
If you’re successful, you’ll then have to remain in bed, with “the head slightly inclined downwards at less than six degrees. The rule is to keep at least one shoulder in contact with the bed or its frame,” and yes, that includes eating, washing and performing bodily functions.
Beck warned that the experiment will look at the effects of prolonged weightlessness, such as those that future astronauts to Mars will have to endure, including things like muscle loss, a drop in bone density and difficulty standing.
Still – two months of getting paid to sleep, where do we sign? Well, right here. Good luck to all you brave souls.
[via Guardian]
(Image: iStock)
