Twin brothers. One went into space. The other didn't. NASA reveals how their bodies differ As it prepares for interplanetary missions, NASA is offering a glimpse of its study of the effects of space on twins. Twins have intrigued scientists for millennia and have been used to study genetics, behavior, biology, and psychology, among other areas of research, for good and for ill. They provide an experimental subject …
Well, bone and muscle loss are likely due to atrophy-like effect. Human bodies were built to be under constant stress of gravity. Take that away, and stuff like that can naturally follow.
What's needed now is some kind of artificial gravity effect like an O'Neil Cylinder to see if something like that can minimize the atrophy.
Also important are vision changes. Astronauts are having pretty bad vision loss that sometimes doesn't recover after landing.
They've sort of found the cerebrospinal fluid amount increases ('cuz zero-g) and presses the eyeball out-of-round. Kinda sorta. It's mostly a "best guess" at the moment. It's a pretty hot topic of course, and they're doing all sorts of tests to confirm/refute/etc but most of the important eye test equipment they want to use is 1000lbs and works only in 1g :-( so they're having to wing it.
Lol wow learn something every day. I always thought that meme (worrd is so ruined these days) started with Knight Rider but dates me well I guess (as well as someone who remembers SNL making fun of trekkies much more than one or two original series episodes I ever saw). Sadly I do remember TJ Hooker a bit better due to the whole only 3 channels back in the day.
"may be a consequence of increased exercise and decreased caloric intake"
So they didn't they give the control subject the same exercise and nutrition as the space-farer?
It's simple to measure the effect of that on earth to give a comparison, so reduce the factors in play for this experiment to get more meaningful results. Eliminate as many variables as possible.
And I thought NASA scientists were generally smart.
It's infallibly true that no matter the topic or forum, some commentard will presume that in the ten seconds they've considered the matter they've found a fundamental truth that eluded researchers in the field acrid years of study. Sometimes this will be attributed to conspiracy, other times (as here) to stupidity.
Anyway one conspicuous problem for providing a matching exercise regime is gravity - even if earth-bound-brother does the same overt exercises he's doing a lot more muscle work both during them and in daily life. As for diet, perhaps he declined to volunteer to eat crap foods for a year? If you're really curious you could read the papers as they come out, or contract the researchers to discuss the protocols, etc. But its certainly easier to pour a cup of AC piss overt them from your keyboard...
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Yeah I don't think they can match for exercise.
But not matching for food is a bit embarrassing. OK it would be asking a fair bit from a research subject (human subject - has to be voluntary, no rewards that could be inducements), but some people *pay* for Solyent: not everyone has the same interests.
Icon for what I would miss.
Since you can't match for exercise you automatically can't match for food. A person trapped in earths crushing gravity well simply needs a different calloric intake simply because of the amount of extra energy expenditure required through a day. Matching food intake exactly would probably mean the earthbound person loses weight. And probably a lot of it. (Even breathing takes more effort on earth due to the pull of gravity on the innards of the body and the different composition of the atmosphere)
I suspect this was all thought off by the researchers and they decided to ignore these effects due to impracticality or impossibility. These people are not exactly stupid and experiments like this don't happen overnight because someone thought it might be a good idea late one evening out drinking with his buddies.
>A person trapped in earths crushing gravity well simply needs a different calloric intake simply because of the amount of extra energy expenditure required through a day.
And even on the surface of earth it varies greatly. For example Robert Scott's South Pole party basically starved to death because they underestimated the caloric needs in that climate hauling a sledge (Amundsen avoided that fate by bringing lots of dogs which he killed some and ate and even fed to other dogs, smart after all having your food carry itself if you can stomach it).
Maybe that is the experiment? A human in space will have no say over the food or the exercise (within reason) they can have. A human on earth can have that flexibility. Therefore, if the experiment is to show the effects of living in the confines and practicalities of space then the lifestyle is part of that (assuming twin 1 would be normally similar in diet and activity to twin 2 while on earth).
AFAIK this wasn't an anti-gravity experiment, it was a comparison to living on earth and in space and everything that entails.
Heinlein would have demanded it.
So would Hugh Walters a few years later :)
Sadly very difficult to find those books these days. Well overdue for a reprint methinks.
Great titles for books. Mission to Mercury, Journey to Jupiter, Spaceship to Saturn, Nearly Neptune, Passage to Pluto. And of course the unpublished work Up Uranus.
Seeing science fiction become fact does bring a smug grin to this old space pirate's face.
FYI: if you burn your jets hard you may catch the 'Bishop' over at the bushcraftuk forum who is currently unloading a scifi book collection. He's had it hidden under his server room floor for twenty years so lots of gems with the really rare ones destined for the Imperial College scifi library in London.
Not even that guarantees things. Some identical twins, living together in the same house and so on, diverged on sexual orientation. This raises plenty of questions on the whole "nature vs. nurture" debate since it suggests neither are key factors and suggests a possible "wild card" factor that can't easily be isolated.
PS. As for the one not having a 'stache, one of them probably shaves.
Depends what you mean by nature and nurture.
There are strongly held views that (at least for males) epigenetics are key, in which case that could still be either, but really leans towards nature, especially given the generally identified probabilities based on number of carried male foetuses.
Probably not much. Mark Kelly retired from NASA in 2011 at least in part to care for his wife Gabrielle Giffords, then a Congressional Representative, who was grievously wounded in an attempted assassination.
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