Human Hibernation Ever since I was a little kid, some science fiction movies used to put people into suspended animation of some sort for long space flights. It seems they never gave a thought to faster than light travel for humans. Now it is happening for real. Chinese scientists claim they have found a switch in monkey brains which can regulate their body temperature. This is a key feature of hibernation and if we have the same switch in our brains, this could be the beginning of creating sleep ships for long space journeys. I wonder how many of you remember the Star Trek story which later became a movie named The Wrath of Khan. It was about the Enterprise coming across a sleeper ship. I personally have thought this was not the way to go and certainly one of the most dangerous ways. Imagine depending on a ship’s computer to take care of the ship and you for many years and hoping nothing goes wrong while you are asleep. There are also some movies about sleeper ships where the crews wake up and the ship had gone off course or the ship was struck while they were sleeping. No, I wouldn’t want to be one of those sleepers. Sleeper technology would also need to provide some way of slowing down the aging process. Who would want to go to sleep for years and lose those years of their lives? I think it is just too much to ask. If we can’t reach a planet in a reasonable amount of time, we just shouldn’t go there until the technology catches up. I can’t help but think of a ship of sleepers slowly moving, relatively speaking, traveling for many years when suddenly a human ship with advanced technology which was invented speeds past them, making their trip and sacrifice useless. I have talked many times to the fact we need more speed and it has to be much faster than light, which many believe is impossible. I look back to times where it was thought nothing could break the sound barrier. Admittedly this barrier is different for many reasons. The first is a brilliant scientist, Einstein said it would take more energy than exists to break the light speed barrier. Second there can be no comparison between the speed needed to break the sound barrier and the speed needed to break the light speed barrier. Lastly breaking the light speed barrier is so far beyond us, even if we could eventually do it, it will probably take centuries to accomplish. When bears hibernate, they have to get ready by getting a lot of fatty tissue to live off of while they hibernate. They have to fatten themselves up first. To me, this shows some sort of nutrients would be necessary to give to hibernating humans to keep them alive. It doesn’t seem to just be a case of not having to provide food for the sleepers as most science fiction stories talk about. The food might be different in some sort of timed injectable form to keep the sleepers going. There is another problem we would have to solve first. If we succeeded in creating a hibernation method for humans and put them on a space ship for long periods of time, they would probably die anyway from all that radiation in space. We know even on short trips astronauts do get exposed to minor amounts. As the exposure increases because of the longer time in space, this gets more dangerous. There is another problem. We have seen what happens to some astronauts who return from the International Space Station. Some of them need help walking. Remember these are people who have performed strenuous exercises everyday to stay in shape and yet they are suffering from some muscle atrophy. Can you imagine what would happen to a sleeper when they woke up if we did nothing to avert this problem. They might die before waking. Their hearts might just get to the point where they no longer can pump and even if that didn’t happen, they might wake and be paralyzed. This means we need a way to prevent this from happening. Just using hibernation is not enough. This is a very complicated process we are talking about. The muscles of the sleepers would need to be stimulated some way to keep them healthy. The ship would probably need some form of artificial gravity. There could be another problem I have not mentioned which we learned from covid. Keeping people isolated is not good for germ resistance. They might come out of years long hibernation and be susceptible to the first germ that comes along. Remember they are also on a mission to an alien planet which could make things even worse. Maybe they would need periodic injections to make sure this doesn’t happen. So far, scientists have figured out humans can be hibernated for about one week safely. It is thought the human bowel would break down with extended hibernation and the sleeper would get sepsis. It is thought if long term hibernation could be perfected, it could be used as an aid in the medical field. There have been all sorts of ideas on how humans could benefit from hibernation. One of the ideas has to do with fighting obesity. The idea would be to put someone into hibernation on a minimal food source and let the pounds peel off and when they woke, they would be slim and healthy. This is just a dream so far, but if it is worked out, it could solve the obesity problem for many, or make it worse. You may wonder why I am saying make it worse. I said this because people might think they could go crazy and just keep going into hibernation when they get too fat. As I said there is belief hibernation could be very useful to the medical field. One area which would advance is hemorrhagic shock from loss of blood. This shuts the body down. If someone could be put into hibernation it would slow the loss of blood until they could get help. This would be especially helpful on the battlefield. I am not a doctor, but I have read hibernation could be extremely helpful in strokes, heart attacks and in many other areas because it gives doctors a chance to save lives slowing the events which cause death. I am all for medical hibernation, and as I said not so much for sleeper ships, and if I were younger, you could never get me to become a sleeper on one of those ships.
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