Sending humans virtually anywhere in space beyond the Moon pushes logistics of health, food, and psychology to limits we're only just beginning to grasp.
A staple solution to these problems in science fiction is to simply put the void-travelers to bed for a while. In a sleep-like state akin to hibernation or torpor, metabolism drops, and the mind is spared the boredom of waiting out endless empty hours.
Unlike faster-than-light travel and wormholes, the premise of putting astronauts into a form of hibernation feels like it's within grasp. Enough so that even the European Space Agency is seriously looking into the science behind it.
Implications of a new study by a trio of researchers from Chile now reveal a mathematical hurdle to turning the potential of long-term human stasis into reality, one that might mean it's as forever beyond our reach.
Roberto F. Nespolo and Carlos Mejias from the Millennium Institute for Integrative Biology and Francisco Bozinovic from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile set out to unravel the relationship between body mass and energy expenditure in animals that hibernate.
They discovered a minimum level of metabolism that allows cells to persist under cold, low-oxygen conditions. For relatively heavy animals like us, the energy savings we might expect from entering a deep, hibernation-like state would be negligible.
In fact, we'd probably be better off just napping our days away the old-fashioned way.
The word hibernation often invokes images of a bear tucked away in a den for a long winter's rest. READ MORE...
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