Growing older can take a serious toll on the body. Bones become brittle, muscle shrinks, the immune system loses strength, and age-related ailments like arthritis can set in. More serious complications like declining cognitive function and heart disease can also take hold as the later years of life progress.
These symptoms can also come from something less common—space travel. Flying through outer space has dramatic effects on the body, and people in space experience aging at a faster rate than people on Earth. Several papers recently published in the Cell family of journals look at the health hazards that spending time in outer space has had on astronauts. These studies showed that space alters gene function, function of the cell’s powerhouse (mitochondria), and the chemical balance in cells.
Hanging Out in Space Mimics Age-Related Disorders
The health effects of spending time in space resemble some age-related disorders, like cancer and osteoporosis. While the similarities of spaceflight to aging give concern for long-term space missions, like a voyage to Mars, the outer space environment also provides an opportunity to study aging processes in the body.
Scientists estimate that the heart, blood vessels, bones, and muscle deteriorate about 10 times faster in space than in natural aging. In other words, scientists don’t need to wait for their biological study subjects to grow older naturally on Earth—with accelerated health effects in space, they can run experiments on astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS).
But the effects of space travel are not exactly the same as aging, and many of the changes that occur in space reverse themselves when people return to Earth. The comparisons can still be useful, though, and scientists say time spent in space provides a good model for understanding the chronic process of aging. Maybe outer space living could reveal new methods for protecting ourselves from processes that make us grow old.
The Effects of Space Travel
Space affects different cell types in different ways, according to Michael Roberts, interim chief scientist of the ISS National Laboratory in a report in National Geographic. “It’s not a single acute exposure to toxic agents, for example; it’s something that’s long-term, chronic, and persistent.” Space life changes the body’s equilibrium for optimal functioning, thereby rebooting the way that cells respond.
In the microgravity atmosphere of outer space, the heart, bones, and muscle don’t need to work as hard as they do on Earth, so they weaken from disuse. Fluid-filled tissues may change shape because liquid flows differently in microgravity, which can change the shapes of organs like the brain. Not only that but higher background radiation outside of Earth’s atmosphere can cause DNA damage and increase cancer risk.
An Astronaut Twin Study
The new research on the health effects of outer space living started with a study on astronaut twin brothers, Scott and Mark Kelly. Ten research teams monitored changes in Scott’s body during his year-long trip to space. The scientists then compared the changes to Scott’s identical twin brother Mark who stayed on Earth during that time. The research teams recorded differences in the twin astronauts ranging from changes in gene expression profiles, microorganisms in the gut (the microbiome), cognitive abilities, and cardiovascular systems.
A striking discovery from the NASA Twins Study was that Scott’s telomeres changed length. Telomeres are regions of DNA at the ends of chromosomes that protect the rest of the DNA from damage, decay, and fraying. Telomere lengths diminish with age and how quickly they shorten is an important indicator of health and aging.
While Scott was in Space, his telomeres lengthened, but when he returned to Earth, they rapidly shrunk. Although his telomeres were longer during spaceflight, he ended up with shorter telomeres than he started with. Shortened telomeres have been linked to cardiovascular disease while longer telomeres are associated with cancer. So, either of these changes in telomere length can have negative health consequences.
Some of the health effects of spaceflight seem to equilibrate after a certain amount of time in space like decreased blood volume and changes in the lungs and heart. Astronauts haven’t spent enough time on the ISS to say with any certainty whether these changes in the body will reach a steady-state, though.
A Cosmic Opportunity
Thanks to the unique environment that comes from space travel, researchers can now look for creative ways to boost human health. Many health-promoting therapies have come from scientists’ efforts to boost humans’ adaptation to space, like obtaining protein from near-indestructible microorganisms called tardigrades, which could also address aging-related diseases that plague humanity.
This may seem like a far stretch from reality, but spaceflight causes significant physiological changes including an accelerated loss of muscle and bone density, and immune system dysfunction that parallel the effects of natural aging here on Earth.
Researchers also observed a change in one of the Hallmarks of Aging: telomere length. While the astronaut was in space, researchers observed the astronaut's telomeres lengthen, which suggests an anti-aging effect. However, 6 months after returning to Earth, the changes reversed.
Beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO), space radiation can pose a significant risk to space explorers. They can experience radiation sickness, central nervous system effects, degenerative diseases, and most notably, an increased lifetime risk of cancer.
That means people who live at high altitudes age a tad faster than those plodding through space-time at sea level. "Gravity makes us age slower, in a relative term," Chou said. "Compared to someone not near any massive object, we are aging more slowly by a very tiny amount.
Since people usually measure their ages in years, your age on different planets will depend on their orbits. Compared to your age in years on Earth, you would be younger on Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and older on Mercury and Venus. But if you measured your age in days, you would get different results.
Because astronauts like the ones on the International Space Station (ISS) are moving so quickly, they're also aging a bit more slowly than the rest of us. Due to a principle of physics known as time dilation, after a six-month stint on the ISS, returning astronauts are just a tiny bit younger than the rest of us.
Astronauts on the ISS experience both weaker gravity and higher velocity, resulting in slightly slower ageing compared to people on Earth. The European Space Agency (ESA) explained in a tweet that “after spending six months on the ISS, astronauts have aged about 0.005 seconds less than the rest of us.”
Their tethers were the only thing that stopped them from floating away to their deaths. Originally Answered: Are there bodies of dead astronauts in space? No, there are not. All of the astronauts that have died so far have perished in accidents either on the ground, during ascent, or during re-entry.
NASA has learned that without Earth's gravity affecting the human body, weight-bearing bones lose on average 1% to 1.5% of mineral density per month during spaceflight. After returning to Earth, bone loss might not be completely corrected by rehabilitation; however, their risk for fracture is not higher.
Albert Einstein's 1915 theory of general relativity proposes an effect called time dilation. This means that you would age slightly slower or faster depending on the gravitational field, an effect that can be measured with atomic clocks located at different elevations.
Keeping body weight, blood sugar, cholesterol and blood pressure in check while maintaining healthy sleep and eating regimes, doing regular physical activity and not smoking may slow the ageing process by around six years, US experts say.
Can you Age less if you live in an environment with more Gravity? No, definitely not. Clocks tick slower in more gravity, but the time on clocks has nothing to do with aging. The force of gravity is the cause of motion and stress that causes physical age.
Since Mars is further from the Sun compared to the Earth, a Martian year is longer: 687 days. That's just less than two Earth years. Although you wouldn't age any quicker, living on Mars you'd only be celebrating a birthday roughly every two years, since a birthday is marking another orbit around the Sun.
If you are exactly 12 years old, that's 4 380 days (12 x 365). It would also mean that today is your birthday. If, however, you lived on Mercury and had a birthday every 88 days then you would be nearly 50 years old (4 380 ÷ 88 = 49.77).
Mars' orbit around the sun (and therefore its years) takes about twice as long as Earth's. So after the person on Earth turned 10, the person on Mars would be 5.3 Mars years old.
No, people who go to space do not stay young longer solely because of their space travel. While space travel does have unique effects on the human body due to factors like microgravity, radiation exposure, and other environmental conditions, it doesn't lead to extended youthfulness.
Not so much the velocity of the Moon. Though the velocity effect isn't negligible, being about two orders of magnitude down from the gravity effect. Time passes about 0.66 parts per billion faster on the Moon than on Earth, due to not being in as strong a gravity field.
In short, a person near a black hole will age slower compared to someone far away from the black hole. This is because the passing of time is slowed down due to the extremely strong gravitational field near the black hole and thus, any physical aging processes will also happen slower.
Introduction: My name is Horacio Brakus JD, I am a lively, splendid, jolly, vivacious, vast, cheerful, agreeable person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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