• Question: Would living on a different planet have an impact on our bodies that may lead to us having certain diseases? Thankyou

    Asked by Winnie60701 to COLFlight, Beth, Anne on 14 Oct 2015. This question was also asked by yah its salehaa, jayjayjetplane.
    • Photo: Beth Healey

      Beth Healey answered on 14 Oct 2015:

      Hey Winnie60701 and #love turqoise!

      Great question!

      Although we can’t say for sure I think that we most likely would! If you were living on a different planet you would be subject to different environmental conditions. For example different (or no) gravity, altered radiation levels and perhaps also new microbes! These would most likely lead to different diseases.

      We already see this to some extent in astronauts because spaceflight puts them at risk of changes like reduced bone density due to the reduced gravity (as well as lot’s of other things!).

      This forms part of my research here in Antarctica. Concordia is considered a spaceflight analogue. That is to say that the conditions here are similar to those found on long duration spaceflight missions or other planets. Therefore we are doing a number of experiments on the crew to see how we change in response to these different conditions. One example is testing our eyesight after 105 days using only artificial light sources (during the long polar night when we didn’t see the sun for over 3 months here!).

      B

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