Every year, millions, if not billions, of dollars are allocated for research into extraterrestrial life and finding ways for us to set foot on a remote planet.
This is not just a far-fetched desire. Achievements such as humans landing on the Moon and developing advanced machinery like spacecraft to explore Mars demonstrate the progress we have made in our quest to explore and conquer the universe.
.jpg)
The advancement of science and technology has made traveling around the Earth easier and seemingly insufficient. Human beings are increasingly craving to explore the universe – Photo: Austral de Chile University
One familiar method depicted in science fiction films for humans to travel through space to another planet is by “putting the body into a state of hibernation.” Astronauts would enter a device similar to a pod, and with the help of scientific techniques, their bodies would essentially “sleep” for several months to years. When the ship lands on a new planet, the astronauts would awaken.
However, everything must be viewed in the context of reality. Scientists in Chile assert that this is just an unrealistic fantasy, only seen in movies.
Researchers from the Austral University of Chile conducted a study to investigate whether humans can hibernate like bears.
In certain mammals, such as bats, some marsupials, and hibernating animals, natural hibernation can reduce energy consumption by up to 98% compared to normal levels. If achievable, this would allow us to efficiently hibernate during prolonged space journeys longer than a lifetime.
In space missions, the mass of one astronaut and everything accompanying them on the spacecraft directly affects the mission’s weight, as well as the number of necessary launches for the trip.
In a scene from the movie Alien, astronauts wake up in a “pod” after a long period of hibernation.
One proposed solution is to put humans into a short-term hibernation state, where physiological activities are reduced – typically due to decreased body temperature and metabolic rate – significantly reducing mass and size requirements on the spacecraft.
Researchers have examined the metabolism during hibernation in mammalian species (such as bats and bears) and discovered that the metabolic rate of one gram of tissue in each bat is similar to one gram of tissue in each bear during hibernation, despite bears being about 20,000 times larger than bats.
Black and brown bears, weighing around 80-400 kg, are the largest known hibernators and can reduce their metabolic rate by up to 75% during hibernation. However, bats can reduce their energy expenditure by 95-98%.
This demonstrates that the ability to regulate metabolism during hibernation varies depending on weight and body mass. Adult human bodies are relatively large, so the energy savings during hibernation would be less compared to the energy savings during normal sleep.
The findings published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B deliver disappointing news for science fiction enthusiasts, indicating that humans will never be able to survive in a prolonged hibernation state for long-distance space travel.
Previous studies on dwarf lemurs (the closest genetic relatives to humans) in hibernation revealed that during an 8-month hibernation period, their normal heart rate of 180 beats per minute could decrease to as low as 4 beats per minute.
According to Maria Berg von Linde, a cardiologist at Orebro University in Sweden, it is also hoped that from hibernating brown and black bears, we can learn preventive and therapeutic measures for various diseases.
“If humans spent half a year in a state of physical inactivity without eating, defecating, or urinating, they would experience heart failure, blood clots, organ damage, and blood poisoning. Bears don’t encounter these issues. Understanding and applying hibernation techniques may lead to significant discoveries with implications for treating diseases in humans,” she stated.