Researchers in Catalonia are using the SOLARIS app to collect smartwatch and fitness tracker data from thousands of volunteers during the 12 August 2026 total solar eclipse. The project records heart rate and breathing patterns over a five-day window — two days before, the eclipse day, and two days after — to study how the human body physiologically responds to the event. It highlights the broader shift in medical research toward large-scale, real-world wearable data collection, which enables studies that would be impossible in a lab setting. Experts note that the same methodology could be applied to heat waves, pandemics, and other societal phenomena, though challenges around device standardization across manufacturers remain.
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