I'll back up. At the Jet Propulsion Institute in Pasadena, California, they're studying the effects of long-term weightlessness in astronauts. Since humans sure didn't evolve in a zero-gravity environment, our bodies have no innate mechanisms to counter the long-term effects of weightlessness. If you spend more than a few weeks in a space station or shuttle, your bones start to become brittle and weak, unable to support your weight under the tug of normal Earth gravity. The proteins that maintain human bone slow down and stop when there's no work for them to do, until the bones begin to come apart on the cellular level.
Before we get started on a Mars base or any other marathon space adventure, we need to study this bone-loss phenomenon carefully, and figure out how to reverse it. Otherwise, every long-term space trip will be a suicide mission, with astronauts eventually succumbing to extreme osteoporosis. It's not very spacecaptainly to get a disease that's normally reserved for grannies, so NASA is working hard on simulating and studying weightlessness. To that end, they built a machine that reverses gravity for baby mice.
It exploits a principle called diamagnetism: when placed in an extremely strong magnetic field, water molecules begin to produce a charge in opposition to the field. If the principal magnetism is strong enough, the water molecules will manifest enough magnetic charge to counter the original field. To levitate an animal, you need to levitate every water molecule in its body.
This technology has existed for a while, but until recently, they couldn't levitate much besides grasshoppers and frogs. Since the levitation technology works specifically on water, a slippery frog makes an excellent candidate. You can find some pretty amazing Youtube videos of weightless frogs spinning in wild circles, kicking off with their legs and flipping end over end.
Surprisingly, the levitating mice seemed to adapt very well. After a few hours of paddling around clumsily, they settled down to normal mouse behaviour: eating, drinking, sleeping, and going to the mouseroom with what seemed like very little change. Better yet, they seemed unharmed by the massive electromagnetic charge.
This kind of experiment obviously applies to the problem of human survival in zero gravity. If we can study weightless mammals as their bone density drops off, we can attempt various treatments in real time – that's a whole lot better than just patching up astronauts' broken legs and prescribing painful physiotherapy.
Even if you're not a space exploration buff, you ought to be worked up by now. Keep in mind that space technology keeps on making its way into mainstream life – that's where Velcro comes from, and powdered fruit drinks, and memory foam mattresses. I don't think anyone will dispute that levitation's cooler than memory foam mattresses.
Fifty years from now, your grandkids could be hassling you for levitation-park tickets. A gigantic crane will lift them four hundred feet in the air, and drop them while they giggle. A tenth of a second before the ground smashes them to bits, they'll get caught in the electromagnetic field, and float softly to the ground... somebody better invent that, or I'll do it myself.
I'll back up. At the Jet Propulsion Institute in Pasadena, California, they're studying the effects of long-term weightlessness in astronauts. Since humans sure didn't evolve in a zero-gravity environment, our bodies have no innate mechanisms to counter the long-term effects of weightlessness. If you spend more than a few weeks in a space station or shuttle, your bones start to become brittle and weak, unable to support your weight under the tug of normal Earth gravity. The proteins that maintain human bone slow down and stop when there's no work for them to do, until the bones begin to come apart on the cellular level.
Before we get started on a Mars base or any other marathon space adventure, we need to study this bone-loss phenomenon carefully, and figure out how to reverse it. Otherwise, every long-term space trip will be a suicide mission, with astronauts eventually succumbing to extreme osteoporosis. It's not very spacecaptainly to get a disease that's normally reserved for grannies, so NASA is working hard on simulating and studying weightlessness. To that end, they built a machine that reverses gravity for baby mice.
It exploits a principle called diamagnetism: when placed in an extremely strong magnetic field, water molecules begin to produce a charge in opposition to the field. If the principal magnetism is strong enough, the water molecules will manifest enough magnetic charge to counter the original field. To levitate an animal, you need to levitate every water molecule in its body.
This technology has existed for a while, but until recently, they couldn't levitate much besides grasshoppers and frogs. Since the levitation technology works specifically on water, a slippery frog makes an excellent candidate. You can find some pretty amazing Youtube videos of weightless frogs spinning in wild circles, kicking off with their legs and flipping end over end.
Surprisingly, the levitating mice seemed to adapt very well. After a few hours of paddling around clumsily, they settled down to normal mouse behaviour: eating, drinking, sleeping, and going to the mouseroom with what seemed like very little change. Better yet, they seemed unharmed by the massive electromagnetic charge.
This kind of experiment obviously applies to the problem of human survival in zero gravity. If we can study weightless mammals as their bone density drops off, we can attempt various treatments in real time – that's a whole lot better than just patching up astronauts' broken legs and prescribing painful physiotherapy.
Even if you're not a space exploration buff, you ought to be worked up by now. Keep in mind that space technology keeps on making its way into mainstream life – that's where Velcro comes from, and powdered fruit drinks, and memory foam mattresses. I don't think anyone will dispute that levitation's cooler than memory foam mattresses.
Fifty years from now, your grandkids could be hassling you for levitation-park tickets. A gigantic crane will lift them four hundred feet in the air, and drop them while they giggle. A tenth of a second before the ground smashes them to bits, they'll get caught in the electromagnetic field, and float softly to the ground... somebody better invent that, or I'll do it myself.
Don't take my word for it. Check out the video footage:
Here's the frog: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Here's a grasshopper: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
And here's a strawberry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Don't take my word for it. Check out the video footage:
Here's the frog: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Here's a grasshopper: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
And here's a strawberry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Martin Hazelbower
Columnist
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