Cuball

ok, maybe it should have been a new thread but I wanted to have it's own :-)


here goes:

It may sound stupid but would we humans be able to live in place where gravitation is 2x ours (or more?)

if we live there for 1 year and return back to normal gravity, what would happen ? jump higher ? be a lot stronger ? be smaller ?

or would we not survive (are heart not being strong enough to get enough blood in our head e.g.)


It may sound stupid but I got it from an anime series called DBZ :-)

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Baron2

Your heart would have to work almost 2x harder, so if you had a heart condition, you'd be totally f*cked. Your eheart would eventually get stronger and you'd have more muscle mass (harder to walk/do everyday things).

If you came back you could kick everyone's ass

Grondar

I wonder though..

Would the bone structure of our bodies change to the point that when we were returned to "normal" gravity level, we wouldn't be best suited for it anymore?

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phoenix1002

I'm not sure... it depends on what the point is where the human heart is no longer able to pump blood effectively. Anything under that point I suspect would be liveable, but it would definitely be difficult to get used to. I also suspect that unless there was some way to train for increased-gravity conditions, people would be injured trying to adapt, again depending on the increase in gravity. Also likely is that it would decrease lifespan, or at least physical wear on the body. Look at someone who has done manual labor for most of their life, and compare that person to someone who has worked a desk job for most of their life. The laborer will look much older and worn out. I suspect that the constant stress on the body would have a similar effect... humans have evolved to the gravity on earth, and changing that can have bad effects. Look at people in zero-G; they have to work out quite a bit, so their muscles don't degrade too much. We're talking about the opposite effect really: too much gravity damaging the muscles and body.

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Gatecrasher

Baron is correct...

here is some interesting research that was done at my university back in the day:

"There was the hyper-G work done on chickens, for example, by
Arthur Hamilton ("Milt") Smith in the 1970s. Milt Smith was a gravity specialist at the University of California at Davis who wanted to find out what would happen to humans if they lived in greater-than-normal G-forces. Naturally, he experimented on animals, and he decided that the animal that most closely resembled man for this specific purpose was the chicken. Chickens, after all, had a posture similar to man's: they walked upright on two legs, they had two non-load-bearing limbs
(the wings), and so on. Anyway, Milt Smith and his assistants took a flock of chickens -- hundreds of them, in fact -- and put them into the two eighteen-foot-long centrifuges in the university's Chronic Acceleration Research Laboratory, as the place was called.

"They spun those chickens up to two-and-a-half Gs and let them stay there for a good while. In fact, they left them spinning like that day and night, for three to six months or more at a time. The hens went around and around, they clucked and they cackled and they laid their eggs, and as far as those chickens were concerned that was what ordinary life was like: a steady pull of two-and-a-half Gs. Some of those chickens spent the larger portion of their lifetimes in that goddamn accelerator.

"Well, it was easy to predict what would happen. Their bones
would get stronger and their muscles would get bigger--because they had all that extra gravity to work against. A total of twenty-three generations of hens was spun around like this and the same thing happened every time. When the accelerator was turned off, out walked . .GREAT MAMBO CHICKEN!

"These chronically accelerated fowl were paragons of brute
strength and endurance. They'd lost excess body fat, their hearts
were pumping out greater-than-normal volumes of blood, and their extensor muscles were bigger than ever. In consequence of all this, the high-G chickens had developed a three-fold increase in their ability to do work, as measured by wingbeating exercises and treadmill tests

SOURCE: http://yarchive.net/space/science/g_tolerance.html

SecretMethod70

This is an interesting concept. I don't know about 2x gravity but 1.5x perhaps we could handle it (then again, I don't know how strong the heart is generally). One things for sure is that if you survived you'de end up a lot stronger than most people here. I don't think coming back would cause a problem however - at least not for semi-short periods such as a year - gravity in space is significantly less and we're capable of handling that.

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World's King

Just think of all the people that would go on diets becasue increased wieght.

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TaLoN

if our bodies had evolved to be able to adapt to strong gravity then we could survive. but the way they are setup right now, even if our hearts could keep up, our bones would start to bend downward. they do it in the "dragon ball/z/gt" series, but those are aliens and extra-ordinary people

WildZero

Pro: Stronger muscles from having to work harder to move.

Con: Testicles that swing between your knees.

Dunno, sounds risky.

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Cuball

they kept the chickens in the centrifuges for 6 months ... omg

if we do this with humans ? wouldn't we notice it that we are spinning ?

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forgotten_dream

Heh heh heh.....
You'd eventually get used to it, as long as you started low and increased gradually. You work your way from 2x to 10x times gravity, get super ripped. You'd have a super powerful heart--- then you'd come out and it would pump blood straight through the top of your head.

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Cuball

they should really do some more test on this subject, maybe with monkey's or something :-)

instead of going on an altitude stage top athlethes would go on a gravity stage ;-)

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forgotten_dream

And after training at 100x gravity, they could use the kao-ken technique to go even faster, and tackle people with kamehameha blasts! Oh wait, that still wouldn't happen...

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Cuball

hehe, we have a dbz fan :-)

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BubblegumTeflon

This Wired article talks about that stuff and covers all the side effects of high-G.

forgotten_dream

Hell yeah! I've actually wondered about that myself. I have some friends that allready do the whole wrist/ankle weights thing. Which was pretty damned funny when he took them off after a week-- he went to scratch his nose, over did it, and poked himself in the eye. So I suppose that could be a danger of coming back down-- you'd over exagerate all of your movements, resulting in breaking of expensive china and poking of eyes.

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BubblegumTeflon

Hehe that would be so funny, I can just imagine someone running to catch a bus and their gravity-legs make them hop like a rabbit.

GoldenOuroboros

Haven't any of yous seen Dragon Ball Z.. I dunno.. Train under a thousand times gravity and you become a... super saiyan

I'll be up for some gravity training

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Cuball

thx for the article !

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rsl12

bubblegum teflon: interesting article. i wonder if the chickens in the other experiment had similar problems?

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oane

Hey! Don't forget that the tits would sag That would suck.

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MSD

I'd say it would be necessary to speed up the centrifuge gradually to ease the body into it. In the beginning, you'd have to keep activity to a minimum to prevent the heart from being overworked. Eventually, the muscles and bones would build up to handle the new stress. Coming out, the heart would be overworked, like the situations when a 500-pound man has all of it lipo'ed off, and suffers an aneyurism because his heart is now pumping too hard for his body. You would be like the über-chicken, able to lift more, jump higher, and run faster.

I'd be fucked up in the first two hours between the bad back, bad knees, and flat feet.

Daval

Wouldn't you lose weight?

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forgotten_dream

Muscle weighs more than fat. You'd lose body fat, but you'd gain a ton of muscle and bone mass.

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Brian Fury

Testing on monkeys would morally wrong to start with, and also monkeys in general are much stronger faster and harder than humans to begin with.
this may mean the monkeys have a higher tolarence to the increased gravity than humans, making the experiment not very accurate, if usefull at all

ratbastid

I don't really think it would have much impact on an individual. Our physiology is pretty fixed, and while we will have reactions and responses to our environment, radical re-shaping of the adult body seems unlikely to me.

Now, a couple generations in, you'll start seeing those effects. Could be that children concieved and raised in 2x standard gravity would have radical physical effects displayed. Certainly after a few generations, and given a sufficient population size, natural selection would tend to favor individuals who are stout enough to operate in that environment.

It's not often I get to describe individuals as "stout". Thanks!

Suave

I don't see how it's any different from testing on chickens.

Not only that, but they've already done the test on humans. If it's okay for humans to participate, I don't think it's morally wrong to include monkeys.

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Brian Fury

It's not different to test on chickens
Monkeys arn't fully capible of understanding the situation. If the tests have already been taken on humans why can't they just continue doing so, Their could be a greater feedback form the subject than if it were a monkey.

Carno

Fighter pilots (and other pilots as well) routinely pull off 2 G's, and their hearts still pump blood to their brains. It takes much more than 2 G's to keep your heart from getting blood to your brain- more like 6 or 7 G's.

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mariux123

Sure their heart pump blood at 2G, but they are only experiencing it for a minute or some. For a whole lifetime would be a completely differente matter.

skier

I don't think it's a matter of can or can't, but more of how much work it takes to do so. It would put a lot of strain on your heart to deliver, and if it was weak it could just fail altogether.

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Carno

Maybe, but I still don't think 2 G's is very much of a strain. If exposed to the 2 G environment in a graduated and controlled manner, I don't think a human heart would have much trouble at all.

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Gilda

The human body can easily handle 2 g's. You get more than that jogging, or just hopping up and down in place. There are women my height who weight twice what I do and function just fine, and some who are three or four times my size and, while not operating just fine, are still alive and able to walk and move about.

This is what I think would happen, based on an admittedly limited knowledge of fitness training and having read a lot of science fiction.

Assuming your heart was healthy to begin with, you'd become stronger in an absolute sense, but would be weaker in a relative sense. You'd tire after a shorter period of time, impact excercises would have a much greater potential for damaging your joints.

Your heart, assuming it began healthy, would be fine initially and would readily adapt to the point that, after a long enough period of time, you'd have a heart with Lance Armstrong capacity.

Upon returning, you'd have a body that wouldn't necessarily look much different, but would be much more efficient in terms of how much muscular endurance you had, like someone whose been training in aerobic excercises at a high intensity for a very long period of time. You'd be more muscular, but it would be in the form of longer, leaner, possibly more dense muscles, like someone doing low intensity, high repetition excercises. Think dancer or swimmer rather than bodybuilder, unless of course you made a concerted effort to do build muscle mass.

It would be a lot like altitude training which affected the whole body rather than just aerobic capacity.

Gilda

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zakk2727

i would do it if i got the chance, but i never hear anything about it, my heart is healthy, i'm in good shape and to come out in even better shape (bigger, stronger, etc.) would just be amazing

span2

My grandparent have labored their whole lives as farmers up to this day and they are mostly fine except for my grandmother who has arthritis. Although they may look more haggard and "worn out", due to constant exposure to the sun, they could be healthier than an office drone. Like others have said, we should be able to adjust to the increased gravity if it were introduced gradually.

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KungFuGuy

I'm really curious as to the effect such an increase in gravity would have on age and longevity.

My immediate knee jerk conclusion is that with a person's / chicken's metabolism sped up so much to compensate for the increase in bone/muscle production, that longevity would be significantly decreased.

nazzgull

Replying since i was searching the google ( made account jsut to answer)

Ok since nobody gets the whole gravity thing.... except from the mass / distance and whatever.... its simple like this.... If ur hand weighs 4kg.... x2 gravity is exactly liek 4x2
So if we were to live in an x2 gravity place we would have to have the energy to lift every piece of us x2 harder.... People will be shorter cause of the gravity.vs.bone material multiplication.... we would be much stronger if we came back to earths x1 gravity
much thicker bones .... (internally not exactly Exterior showing) and feel as light as a feather ( only logical cause of muscle multiplication from stronger use ).
Yes for starters humans can live in x2 gravity and take it slower to higher....
Now i saw something about heart attacks....... Our Heart Is A Muscle..... Since it will be working harder it will multiply its muscles , and eventually will be able to withstand the force of the gravity atm....
(Astronauts get taller in outer space did u know that ?)
(Astronauts live longer in outer space did u know that?)
(Astronauts get a hard time to get used to the earths gravity again ...since less gravity in space)
(Astronauts get much weaker and slowly their bones and muscles start getting too relaxed resulting in their bones being easy to break!)

End of story not checking this post again.

yournamehere

This pretty much sums up what I was gonna say. The human body adapts to how you use or abuse it. If 400-lb people can walk around on a frame meant to support 170 lbs., I think 2 x gravity would not adversely affect a normal person. Those 400 pounders may not get around well, though.

I'm betting there would be a lot more fatasses begging their doctors for a handicap placard.

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andresdx1

Okay, the only reason why i'm posting a reply is because i know what your talking about and i was about to ask the same question but i saw yours instead. there is not a machine in the world that can create such intense gravity BUT you can experience what it would be like if the gravity increased. This is for reals and listen! if you've ever been in a carnival and gone on the gravitron, you lay against a pad and as soon as the ride starts spinning, you get stuck to the seat and you can't move. WHY? because as the ride starts picking up speed, the gravity increases.
I've looked up that at the maximum peak of the ride, the gravity is about 3X earth's gravity. I have gone in the ride multiple times to try to move just like goku did in King Kai's planet but its harder than it looks. yes, eventually you will get used to it but it takes time. and the ride is only about 2 minutes or something so you won't have much of an opportunity. AND when you start moving, it's likely you will get dizzy and have feel sick. but be careful with trying too hard during the ride because you might pull a muscle. so try stretching before you go on the ride. I was so excited when i went on because i wanted so bad to train under 3X earth's gravity and now you can try if they have that ride at carnival. try it! thats the closest thing to DBZ for now :-/ but at least it's possible!!! maybe in the future weight rooms with be equipped with gravity machines. Who knows what the future has in store.