S.C.A.D. — Suspended Catch Air Device

There are two of them in the U.S., one in Wisconsin and one in Dallas, Texas (above and below).

I only learned of their existence yesterday when I read about them in Burkhard Bilger's sprightly New Yorker profile of David Eagleman, a Baylor College of Medicine neuroscientist who employed the unique fear-inducing property of the Zero Gravity Amusement Park ride in an investigation attempting to quantify the perception that time slows down when we fear we might be dying.

Long (but well worth reading if you've got the time or interest — of course, that's true of anything, isn't it? ... but I digress) article short: Eaglemen strapped a playing card deck-sized "perceptual chronometer" with an L.E.D. display to a subject's wrist, where it would flash a number at a rate just faster than the normal threshold of perception.

"If time slowed down, Eagleman reasoned, the number would become visible."

In fact, none of his 20 subjects ever saw the number, answering one question but raising others which prompted subsequent investigations.

Any reader(s) ever take the S.C.A.D. plunge?

If so, what was it like?

Scaredy-cat blogger would like to know, as would his readers.