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Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

1:29

Hello, welcome to 5 Live Science. I'm

1:31

Chris Smith from The Naked Scientists. And

1:34

in the programme this week AstraZeneca acknowledged

1:36

that their COVID vaccine is linked to

1:38

a rare blood clotting side effect. We'll

1:40

find out more about it. Also,

1:42

whether scientists are getting closer to

1:44

cracking nuclear fusion and how

1:47

adding bacteria to plastic could

1:49

be the key to making the stuff break

1:51

itself down eventually. Plus... I

1:54

could unstuck from my seat and then

1:56

actually float out. And that's when you

1:58

really start to... feel it for

2:01

your own body. But of course up until

2:03

then, every movement I made, I moved my

2:05

little finger, I lifted up my instruction manual

2:07

and there were signals going back to my

2:10

brain all the time that everything felt weightless.

2:12

We're heading into space to see

2:14

how zero gravity affects our bodies and what

2:16

science is doing to help combat the effect.

2:19

The Naked Scientists on Five

2:21

Live. First

2:23

this week, the pharmaceutical behemoth

2:25

AstraZeneca have acknowledged that their

2:27

widely used Covid-19 vaccine branded

2:30

Covishield can cause rare side

2:32

effects including blood clots. Covishield

2:35

was developed by AstraZeneca in collaboration with

2:37

the University of Oxford and it's been

2:39

widely administered across the world and credited

2:41

with saving millions of lives. But

2:44

what have we learned since about the

2:46

vaccine and its side effects?

2:48

I went to see Claire Bryant who's

2:50

an immunologist at the University of Cambridge.

2:53

The AstraZeneca vaccine took a chimpanzee adenovirus,

2:55

that's the kind of virus that causes

2:58

colds but because it comes from a

3:00

chimpanzee it doesn't actually cause disease in

3:02

people. What they did

3:04

was they introduced the spike

3:06

protein gene which is the

3:08

key part of the coronavirus that everybody

3:11

had the vaccines made against. They

3:13

introduced that into the chimpanzee adenovirus and

3:15

then they used that to vaccinate people

3:17

and the interesting thing about that viral

3:20

vexer is that it can enter human

3:22

cells but it can't proliferate. So

3:24

disabled virus basically enters human cells, introduces

3:27

the spike protein gene and the cells

3:29

make the spike protein and this is

3:31

then passed out of the cell to

3:33

form a vaccine response. Note at this

3:36

point please everybody that that does not

3:38

mean that the spike protein gene integrates

3:40

into the human DNA, just sits

3:43

there and gets transcribed into the

3:45

protein. So the

3:47

technology that's actually been well worked, the Oxford

3:49

group who works with AstraZeneca to make the

3:51

vaccine have been using this technology

3:53

for many years and indeed they used it to

3:56

make a successful Ebola vaccine. Very

3:58

successful though wasn't it? I

4:00

read was that literally billions of

4:02

doses were given and millions of lives were

4:04

saved. So at the end of the day,

4:06

it did do a very good job regardless

4:09

of side effects, which we'll come to in

4:11

a minute. Yeah, for sure. The estimate is

4:13

it saved 6 million lives. They think it was about

4:15

70 to 80% effective. And that's what

4:17

we needed at the time. And

4:20

what was the outcome that

4:22

made people concerned about the

4:24

AstraZeneca vaccine as its

4:27

rollout occurred? What

4:29

occurred was that a very few people

4:32

had a very serious side effect. So

4:34

what was happening is awful, really awful

4:36

for the very few people, one in

4:38

10,000, I think they saw this in,

4:40

they ended up having some kind of

4:42

clot. So what would happen

4:44

is that people would produce some

4:47

clots, blood clots, these could lodge

4:49

in different parts of the body and then

4:51

cause a very serious outcome in it. If

4:53

it goes into your brain, of course, it

4:55

gives you a stroke. And this is life

4:58

threatening and certainly life

5:00

altering and potentially life threatening. And

5:02

this was the problem with the

5:04

AstraZeneca vaccine, but again, very, very rare,

5:06

but very, very serious when it

5:08

occurs. Do we know the

5:10

mechanism of that occurring? Do we know why

5:13

that one in 10,000 people had this

5:15

happen to them and the other 9,999 people

5:17

didn't? Not

5:21

completely, but there is some evidence beginning to

5:23

emerge to try and understand what's happening. So

5:25

what happens is when you

5:28

get vaccinated, you produce antibodies and you

5:30

produce predominantly antibodies against the spike protein,

5:33

but sometimes you can get antibodies produced against

5:35

other proteins in the body. And in this

5:37

case, what happens in this vaccine

5:39

induced thrombotic syndrome is that

5:42

the antibody binds to a

5:44

platelet protein. So platelets are

5:46

critical for driving clotting. This

5:48

then forms a big blob effectively

5:50

and activates the platelets and the

5:52

platelets then clot. Now, exactly

5:55

why that happens in some people and not

5:57

others is not really understood and we don't

5:59

really know. know clearly yet what parts of

6:01

the vaccine may be driving this. But

6:04

it is a well-recognised syndrome with

6:06

some vaccines very, very well-recognised and

6:08

that's part of the mechanism that's

6:10

happening in this case. Do

6:13

you think it was unique to the

6:15

COVID use of the vaccine

6:17

backbone? Because you mentioned they've used it for

6:20

other things like Ebola and we didn't see

6:22

this. Is it just the

6:24

scale of use or is it there's something

6:26

special about the COVID vaccine and therefore they

6:28

can carry on using the technology quite safely

6:30

for other things because it is very good,

6:32

it's very efficient, very agile and very cheap

6:34

as well which was one of the attractions.

6:37

Very good for resource poor settings. I

6:40

suspect it's the scale to

6:42

be honest. It's really hard to tell. We

6:45

don't know the answer to that question I think. And

6:48

the scale of rollout of

6:50

the COVID vaccine was so

6:52

huge that when you've got a side

6:54

effect that's occurring in one in 10,000 people then

6:57

you will pick it up if you're giving millions,

6:59

billions of doses. So I think

7:02

we don't know about things like

7:04

the Ebola vaccine. I

7:07

think it's possible but

7:10

we will have to wait and see unfortunately

7:12

unless we actually work out precisely what it

7:14

is about the AstraZeneca vaccine which could then,

7:17

the COVID vaccine which could then be modified

7:19

because if we do understand that mechanism and

7:21

can take that out of

7:24

the adenovirus

7:26

backbone then we would be

7:28

looking at something that actually because the other

7:30

side effects that occurred would work the same as you

7:32

would get with the cold or something like

7:34

that which you also got with the Moderna vaccines.

7:37

So there's work to be done I think on that

7:39

and I'm sure that's actively being

7:41

done because potentially this

7:43

technology is so fantastic for

7:46

generating cheap vaccines

7:48

against serious diseases. Cambridge

7:50

University's Claire Bryant. In

7:53

recent days there have been some

7:55

interesting developments in the field of

7:57

nuclear fusion. American researchers claim they've

7:59

successfully conducted experiments that could make

8:01

the process easier. Meanwhile, British scientists

8:03

have unveiled a special type of

8:06

reactor, which they say offers new

8:08

ways of controlling the white-hot plasmas

8:10

that are generated and are required

8:12

for nuclear fusion. But

8:14

are we really any closer to

8:16

solving one of scientists' greatest challenges?

8:18

Well here's fusion physicist Brian Appleby

8:20

from Imperial College London. Fusion

8:23

is essentially just a way of making

8:25

nuclear energy, but it's not like the

8:28

normal nuclear energy we get from power

8:30

plants, which is fission energy, which is

8:32

based on splitting of heavy atoms. Instead,

8:35

nuclear fusion is when we join light

8:37

atoms together to release energy. It is

8:39

very attractive because it essentially gives us

8:41

much more energy per unit mass than

8:44

we can get from fission or all

8:46

other energy resources. And it is also

8:48

a much cleaner form of nuclear energy

8:51

than fission. However, it is tremendously difficult

8:53

to do because in order to make fusion

8:55

energy, we essentially have to make something that

8:57

is a hot adventure of the sun in

9:00

order to induce the nuclear reactions within it.

9:02

Indeed, because of course we know fusion works, we

9:05

just look up in the sky to see it

9:07

at work. It's bathing us in glorious sunlight and

9:09

warmth, but the sun has

9:11

the advantage that it's about, I don't know, a

9:13

million times bigger than the earth and millions of

9:15

degrees in the middle, isn't it? So it has

9:18

some of the problems solved. How are scientists

9:20

trying to surmount the fact that we don't

9:23

have a sun to hand? That's exactly correct.

9:25

It's really a question of containment or confinement.

9:27

So with the sun, we make it very,

9:29

very hot. And when you make something very

9:32

hot, it wants to explode. It's got a

9:34

lot of energy. It's under high pressure. It

9:36

will attempt to explode. The sun stays contained

9:38

because it is so massive. It has a

9:41

huge gravitational force that keeps it confined. Whereas

9:43

on earth, when we want to generate nuclear

9:45

fusion energy, we must find alternative man-made

9:48

ways of confining this very hot

9:50

material in which the nuclear reactions

9:52

are happening. And scientists

9:54

have looked at various ways of trying to

9:56

confine this very hot, what

9:59

we refer to as a plasma when we make

10:01

the nuclear fuel very hot because

10:03

of plasma. And scientists have found

10:05

various ways of confining or containing

10:07

these hot plasmas. For example, which

10:09

has been in the news recently

10:11

using magnetic field. There's an announcement

10:13

this week about a wonky

10:16

or twisted donut. They're dubbing it the

10:18

Stellarator. This is the company or the

10:20

group Type 1 Energy. They're

10:23

enthusiastic about this. Why do they think

10:25

this will be the game

10:27

changer or a contributor to becoming

10:29

a game changer? There

10:31

are many reasons for the excitement, some

10:34

of which are based on science, more of

10:37

which are based on economics and money. But

10:40

in particular, the Stellarator is a

10:42

design in which you essentially twist

10:44

the magnetic field lines to make

10:46

them into a closed configuration in

10:48

a manner that very effectively contains

10:50

this hot plasma. The announcement

10:53

is because Type 1 Energy, this bright infusion

10:55

company, have got a particular design which they

10:57

think on paper should be able to give

10:59

them a net energy gain, i.e. get more

11:02

energy out of the system than you're pushing

11:04

into heat and confine the plasma in the

11:06

first instance. Much of

11:08

the excitement about this is because

11:10

of technological developments that we've had

11:12

over the last few years. The

11:14

basic Stellarator design itself dates back

11:16

to, I think, the 1970s perhaps.

11:18

But what's advanced a lot in

11:20

the intervening years is technologies like

11:22

superconducting magnets that actually make it

11:25

efficient to generate these magnetic field

11:28

configurations. The saying they want to have

11:30

a plant to test this active

11:32

in Tennessee by 2025, that's literally next

11:35

year. Which is very ambitious and I

11:37

guess it is nice to see such

11:40

ambition. What's interesting, I've been working in

11:42

this field for over 10 years

11:44

and in the last maybe five years

11:46

there's been a lot of excitement, partly

11:49

because there's lots of money being invested

11:51

in the field, there's lots of startup

11:53

companies that are pursuing different designs and

11:55

need to do lots of exciting things.

11:57

And I think it's very difficult to

11:59

evaluate. all of these in

12:01

isolation. But you know what we look at

12:03

is the fact that across the whole field

12:05

we're seeing a lot of advances both on

12:07

the scientific and on the say the economic

12:09

side of it. It's following a pattern where

12:11

we've got a lot of state companies and

12:13

laboratories who are making a lot of rapid

12:15

progress. And you talk

12:18

about the advancements in the science right

12:20

on cue because there is a paper in

12:22

the journal Nature this week looking at this.

12:24

What are they doing and saying? This is

12:26

quite interesting because this is very much you

12:28

know a scientific development infusion and

12:30

this is a different form of

12:33

twisty magnetic fields. This is the

12:35

tokamak which is eventually a doughnut

12:37

shape of magnetic field lines. And

12:40

there is the D3D tokamak in San

12:42

Diego run by General Atomics which that's

12:45

a well-established device you know they've been

12:47

doing experiments on for a very long

12:49

time. But they've made a

12:51

breakthrough in which they found a way

12:53

that they can actually keep their hot

12:56

plasma contains using the magnetic fields but

12:58

they've increased the density of the plasma

13:00

which they are containing quite significantly. And

13:02

that's very exciting because essentially the denser

13:05

the plasma that we're confining then the

13:07

more nuclear reactions can happen and the

13:09

more efficient the whole process can be.

13:12

So by making lots of

13:14

subtle changes to their system

13:17

as D3D they've been able to you know

13:19

increase the density above what was previously thought

13:21

to be the upper limit on densities that

13:24

could be contained. I'm saying from

13:26

a scientific point of view this is a

13:28

very exciting development for tokamaks. The

13:31

big question with this is how

13:33

it scales up to larger tokamak

13:35

devices because D3D device is actually

13:37

very small by the standards of

13:39

tokamaks. It's only I think of

13:41

order about two meters in diameter

13:43

whereas you know the biggest tokamaks that are

13:45

currently being planned and built are tens of

13:48

meters in size so they're you know an

13:50

order of magnitude bigger and what's not clear

13:52

yet is how the results from D3D could

13:54

actually scale to these larger machines. Brian

13:57

Ethelby, he's at Imperial College in London.

14:00

You're listening to 5 Live Science with me Chris

14:02

Smith. On the way we'll find out about a

14:05

type of plastic that can break itself down with

14:07

the help of some bacteria embedded in it when

14:09

it's made and we're heading into

14:11

space to hear about zero gravity and

14:13

how that affects the human body. Before

14:17

that though, it is official. Women

14:19

are better doctors than men. That's

14:21

at least according to a new

14:23

study called comparison of hospital mortality

14:25

and readmission rates by physician and

14:27

patient sex which finds a small

14:30

but significant benefit to women being

14:32

looked after by female doctors. It's

14:34

been published in Annals of Internal Medicine. F.

14:37

Perry Wilson from Yale School of Medicine and

14:39

author of How Medicine Works and When It

14:42

Doesn't has been taking a closer look at

14:44

the paper for us. This

14:46

was a study that was trying to

14:49

figure out if there is a benefit

14:51

to being treated by a physician who

14:54

matches your sex or is different

14:56

from your sex. There

14:58

have been studies in the past

15:00

that have suggested that in particular

15:02

women patients do a bit better

15:04

when cared for by female physicians

15:07

and this was seeking to delve a little bit deeper into

15:09

that. This word better, how do

15:11

we get underneath that though because that can mean a

15:13

range of different things. Are you cared for better because

15:16

someone cares for you more? You feel better

15:18

looked after? Do you get better faster? You

15:20

die less often. What's that word

15:22

better mean? I agree. I think there's

15:24

a lot of better that would be

15:26

very subjective, you know, just be up

15:28

to how a patient feels after they're

15:30

interacting with a doctor. But in the

15:32

case of the study that we're talking

15:34

about, better was quite literally defined as

15:36

whether you were more likely to survive

15:38

for 30 days after you were admitted

15:40

to the hospital although it's probably not

15:43

capturing everything about quality of care. It's

15:45

nevertheless an outcome that many of us care

15:47

very much about. So who were the patients?

15:49

Where did they get the data from? These

15:52

are patients who use the Medicare

15:54

insurance system in the United States

15:56

which is available to everyone above

15:58

age 65. in this country.

16:00

And so they were slightly older patients. They

16:03

were admitted to the hospital for an

16:05

acute condition. So they were ill. It

16:07

wasn't a scheduled admission to the hospital.

16:10

And they were treated by what is

16:12

known as a hospitalist physician. These are

16:15

doctors who really just care for patients

16:17

while they're in the hospital. They're not

16:19

their GP or primary care providers. We

16:21

might call them over here. And

16:24

importantly for this study, patients in the

16:26

United States don't really get to choose

16:28

who their hospitalist is. It's just whoever,

16:31

you know, is the next one available when

16:33

they're admitted to the hospital. And that means

16:35

that they can't really have a say in

16:37

whether it is a female or a male

16:39

hospitalist. So there's an element of randomization to

16:41

this. Statisticians love this kind of thing because

16:44

it means that you're taking one step closer

16:46

to it being unbiased. It wasn't

16:48

truly randomized where, you know, a coin was

16:50

flipped or a computer generated a random number

16:52

and the patient was assigned based on that.

16:54

But if you look at it, it does

16:57

seem that the patients that were treated by

16:59

male hospitalists and the patients that were treated

17:01

by female hospitalists, they seem very similar. They're

17:03

about the same age, about the same level

17:06

of sickness. And so, you know, while not

17:08

a truly randomized trial, it's better than a

17:11

lot of the observational research that comes

17:13

out. So go on then. Tell us what the

17:15

outcomes were when they broke this down by the

17:18

sex of the patients and the sex of

17:20

the doctors. What did they find? So

17:23

we're talking about a million patients across

17:26

around 50,000 doctors. And what they found,

17:29

first of all, was that female patients tend

17:31

to survive a bit better than male patients.

17:33

The death rate at 30 days was around

17:35

8.2% for female, around

17:37

10% for male. That's independent of

17:39

the sex of their physician. And this

17:41

is not a surprise. We actually know

17:43

from multiple studies that men do worse

17:45

after a hospitalization than women. It may

17:48

be because they're a bit sicker when they

17:50

come in, but that's not too much of

17:52

a surprise. What was more of a surprise

17:54

was that women who were cared for by

17:56

female doctors were statistically

17:58

likely to live longer

18:00

to be more likely to survive at

18:02

30 days than if they were treated

18:04

by male doctors. That was not seen

18:06

among male patients so that the sex

18:08

of the doctor did not matter for

18:10

men but for women there was a

18:12

small but statistically significant effect on the

18:14

order of about 0.2% difference in survival

18:17

at 30 days but

18:20

nevertheless there it was a suggestion that

18:22

females being treated by females might lead

18:24

to better outcomes. If

18:26

you delve into the data are there

18:28

any possible differences between the kinds

18:31

of jobs that women doctors do

18:33

and male doctors do that might

18:35

account for that? It's such a

18:37

good question. It's obviously after you look at

18:39

those results the very next thing you want

18:41

to ask is okay well why? You know

18:43

why this happened and one possibility as you

18:45

suggest is that female hospital doctors do kind

18:47

of different stuff than male hospital doctors and

18:49

one thing that did show up in the

18:51

data is that they tend to see slightly

18:53

less patients. That might suggest that well if

18:55

you see less patients maybe you have a

18:57

little bit more time for each patient that

18:59

you do see and you know time is

19:01

an important thing that we need when we're

19:04

caring for patients to make sure that we're

19:06

listening to them and making our diagnoses

19:08

correct and not being too frazzled and

19:10

whatnot so that's certainly a possibility. There's

19:12

also of course the more difficult things

19:15

to measure. There have been studies in

19:17

the past that suggest that female

19:19

physicians are less likely to dismiss the

19:21

concerns of female patients compared to male

19:24

physicians and so there might be an

19:26

element here of you know women

19:28

kind of understanding women and how they

19:31

describe pain and how they describe symptoms

19:33

that men don't understand as well. Very

19:36

difficult to untangle though. Thanks

19:38

very much to F. Perry Wilson there. Us

19:42

humans produce about 350 million tons of plastic

19:44

every single

19:46

year and because of its chemical composition

19:48

much of that plastic will still be

19:50

hanging around in the environment for centuries

19:53

to come but a team

19:55

of scientists in the United States reckon

19:57

they have a possible solution which involves

19:59

self-taught. digesting plastic impregnated

20:02

when it's made with dormant bacteria

20:04

that can reawaken when the plastic

20:06

gets dumped and then begin

20:08

to break it down. Here's Han Sol

20:11

Kim from the University of California San

20:13

Diego. We wanted

20:15

to mitigate plastic pollution because

20:18

plastic pollution is one of

20:20

the pressing environmental problem and

20:23

many of plastics are taking

20:25

our recycling or collection effort

20:27

and lead you to environment.

20:30

So we want to make inherently

20:32

biodegradable plastics that can naturally

20:34

break down once they are

20:37

lead you to environment. And

20:40

so what's your solution? How might we be able

20:42

to achieve that goal? Our

20:44

inspiration for this study came

20:46

from the idea of pairing

20:48

plastics with bacteria because

20:50

bacteria can program various functions

20:53

into plastics such

20:56

as biodegradability. Say

20:58

that again so you've got bacteria

21:00

that can change the way

21:02

plastic behaves. Yes

21:04

because some bacteria are known

21:06

to break down plastics so

21:09

we envision that if we

21:11

can incorporate bacteria into plastics

21:14

the bacteria will break down the plastic at

21:16

the end of its life cycle.

21:19

Will this work for any plastic or are

21:21

there specific types of plastic because plastics come

21:24

in different formulations and types

21:26

don't they? Yeah that's really

21:29

good question but for this

21:31

work we only focused on

21:33

a specific plastic which is

21:35

called thermoplastic polyurethane. We

21:38

screened and engineered bacteria specifically

21:40

for this plastic but

21:43

I believe that if we can

21:46

screen and engineer bacteria to other

21:48

plastic we will be able to

21:50

expand our work to other

21:53

plastics beyond thermoplastic polyurethane. So

21:55

the trick might work more

21:57

broadly in essence. How

21:59

does it work for you? then talk us through what

22:01

you make, what bacteria

22:03

you use, and

22:05

how that works. We

22:08

used bacillus atelis. It's a

22:10

spore-forming bacteria, which means that

22:13

this bacteria will be transformed

22:15

into dormant form of life

22:17

when it's exposed to harsh

22:20

condition. So under

22:22

this spore-form, bacillus atelis

22:24

is very stable. So

22:26

we were able to compound this bacillus

22:29

atelis spore with plastic during

22:32

the extrusion of plastic. I

22:35

see. So when you're making a plastic

22:37

item, you're mixing up

22:39

what makes the plastic with some of

22:41

these bacteria, they form these

22:44

inert spores and end up embedded in

22:46

the plastic product. Exactly. So

22:49

how do they then know when to

22:51

come to life and start breaking down

22:53

the plastic? So spore

22:55

can remain dormant for many

22:57

years until they are exposed

23:00

to favorable environments that enable

23:02

them to thrive. For example,

23:04

nutrients in soil are good

23:06

triggers for returning spores to

23:08

life. So spores have

23:11

several proteins, which

23:13

is called germinant receptors. And

23:16

once the nutrients in soil bind to

23:18

this receptor, they can

23:20

trigger the germination of spores. This

23:22

means that spores are likely to

23:25

remain inactive until they detect these

23:27

nutrients, which are scarce

23:29

during the useful life of plastic

23:31

in our daily life. But once

23:33

they are littered or buried in

23:35

the soil, the nutrients will

23:38

wake up spores. Wow. And

23:40

how quickly do the bacteria

23:42

then degrade the plastic? So if you

23:44

start with a certain amount of plastic,

23:47

how quickly does it break down and

23:49

what does it break down into? Our

23:52

study showed that more than 90% of mass was

23:56

lost within five months, which

23:58

is twice as... as the

24:01

degradation of plastic without spores. And

24:04

more than 70% of plastic

24:06

was biomineralized into CO2 within

24:09

six months. So it breaks

24:11

down into CO2, obviously not ideal, but

24:13

it's a gas which then just goes

24:16

off and potentially become wood in a

24:18

tree, I suppose, isn't it? It's critically

24:20

not a hunk of plastic left in

24:22

landfill. No, we believe

24:25

this bacteria is environmentally promising

24:27

because Handsome

24:35

Kim, and that papers just came

24:37

out in Nature Communications. Let's

24:40

go now to our question of the

24:42

week and will tingle has taken on

24:44

this from listener, Donald. Assuming

24:46

mosquitoes have taste buds then they should

24:49

have adverse tastes. Have molecular

24:51

scientists explored how to make or

24:53

find chemicals that make mosquitoes disgusted?

24:56

Good question Donald. As someone who's about

24:58

to head off to a particularly mosquito heavy part

25:00

of the world I too would find great reassurance

25:02

in knowing that I was using the most effective

25:04

means of preventing a mousie blight. And

25:06

to find out more I've linked up

25:09

with Professor of Entomology and Disease Ecology

25:11

at the University of Glasgow, Heather Ferguson.

25:13

And with mosquito season just starting in

25:15

Scotland it seemed like the perfect time

25:17

to ask, can mosquitoes even taste? Indeed

25:19

they do. So mosquitoes can taste

25:21

in a number of different ways. First

25:23

of all they have sensory mechanisms that

25:25

allow them to smell from quite a

25:27

long distance and that is influencing their

25:29

ability to taste as well. So that's

25:31

how they can pick up the odor

25:33

of a host. Additionally they can also

25:35

do what we would consider more conventional

25:37

taste actually in their feet. So when

25:39

they land on a host they have

25:41

chemo receptors on there and they can

25:43

get a sense of the flavour of

25:45

the host as well as in

25:48

their sort of salivary glands or when they're probing

25:50

you. That sounds like a bit of

25:52

a leap then to be able to identify something

25:54

that the mosquitoes might find disgusting. what

26:00

we think of something that is repellent,

26:02

pushes them away and they won't even

26:04

approach. When we think about disgusting in

26:06

terms of a taste, ideally

26:08

we would want the mosquito to be disgusted

26:11

before they even came close to a person.

26:13

So if they have to wait to taste

26:15

you, which would happen when they actually land

26:18

upon you, that's quite close. So

26:20

what we would like is that

26:22

feeling of disgust or repellency to

26:24

actually happen before they even get

26:26

ready to land and take a bite

26:28

to stop them actually even approaching you

26:30

in the first place. What is wrong with

26:32

traditional repellents? Because correct me if I'm wrong,

26:35

they're more of a masking agent than a

26:37

repellent as the name suggests. But would anything

26:39

we would make that could make mosquitoes disgusted,

26:41

if that's the word, be worth making when

26:43

we've already got this substance that does a

26:46

pretty good job anyway? No, I'm probably on

26:48

the side of repellent because

26:51

repellents are disgusting to mosquitoes and we

26:53

often describe them as irritants. The mechanism

26:55

by which they push the mosquito away

26:57

is not always known, but there's something

26:59

that makes it so difficult for the

27:02

mosquito to even come close to the

27:04

host, but that is pushing

27:06

them away and I would go for

27:08

that any time than something that would

27:10

actually work by still having the mosquito

27:12

land on you. Maybe start to probe

27:14

with its proboscis and then go, ugh,

27:16

at that stage. That's too late. I want

27:18

it to stop it even getting near me. Sage

27:21

advice. I will be sticking to the classics. Thank

27:23

you to Donald for the question and to Heather

27:25

Ferguson for the answer. It's now time

27:27

for the news and sports. Stay with us though, we'll be

27:29

back right afterwards to journey into space

27:31

and find out how long space trips can

27:33

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on linkedin.com/people today. The

28:43

human body. Well, welcome back to Five

28:45

Life Science with me, Chris Smith. It's made

28:47

by the Naked Scientists, and in this half

28:49

an hour, a colleague will tingle. Takes

28:52

the helm. The evolution of the

28:54

physical body cannot keep pace with our

28:56

ingenuity. Getting a human being up into

28:58

space and keeping them there is still

29:00

a monumental task. The entire moon landing,

29:02

one giant leap from mankind,

29:05

only lasted for just over eight days.

29:07

The average occupant of the International Space

29:09

Station is only up there for six

29:12

months. We have spent millions of years

29:14

evolving to be comfortable on our planet.

29:16

And so to our fragile human form,

29:19

space is still an unflinchingly hostile environment.

29:21

So if we truly seek to expand

29:23

out to the moon, Mars, and beyond, what

29:26

are the challenges involved? And what toll will

29:28

they take? At a base

29:30

level, we need to keep anyone exploring space alive

29:32

and in good health. So what

29:34

does space do to the human body? Now,

29:36

unsurprisingly, I can't answer that. But I do

29:38

know someone very special, a Ken. Helen

29:41

Charman became the first British person to go to

29:43

space on the 18th of May, 1991. She

29:46

took me through her experience after liftoff.

29:49

Immediately, it was just the most

29:52

amazing feeling because although I was still

29:54

strapped into my seat, I was a

29:56

little bit floating away from my back

29:58

and so the ventilation, the air... could

30:00

get behind my back and dry off some

30:02

of that sweat. It took about

30:05

two and a half more hours until I could

30:07

unstuck from my seat and then actually

30:10

float out. And that's when you really

30:12

start to feel it for your own

30:14

body. But of course, up until

30:16

then, every movement I made, I moved my

30:18

little finger, I lifted up my instruction

30:20

manual, and there were signals going back to

30:23

my brain all the time that everything felt

30:25

weightless. So actually, it just

30:27

became a very natural kind

30:29

of feeling. It feels like

30:31

what you're describing is in stark contrast to

30:34

what I imagine would be innate, almost ape

30:36

brain response that a human would have given

30:38

they've spent their entire lives on this 1G

30:41

hunk of rock, and then to be twired

30:43

into space and suddenly none of the rules

30:45

apply. I feel like that would activate

30:47

my fight or flight response, but you're telling me that

30:50

wasn't the case. I think that human bodies

30:52

are just so adaptable and we react

30:54

to our situation. Our legs are pretty

30:56

useless in space, really. We use our

30:58

arms to pull ourselves along with ropes

31:01

along the sides of the modules and

31:03

just we learn how to push off

31:05

from one wall and very

31:07

accurately actually just float exactly where we need

31:09

to be to the other

31:12

wall. So yeah, it's a very adaptive

31:14

process, I think. Whilst it's

31:16

very reassuring that the human mind and

31:18

the behaviours therein is very adaptable

31:20

to 0G and being up in

31:22

space, it's probably less sure

31:24

to say that the body itself is

31:26

the same. It feels like the

31:28

team that sent you up probably didn't just stick you

31:30

into a tin can like the fuse and go, yeah,

31:32

you'll probably be fine. You were presumably told to watch

31:35

out for certain health things whilst you were up there.

31:37

Yeah, sure. I knew that there was going

31:39

to be a fluid shift and that's the

31:41

first thing that you really notice inside yourself.

31:44

So no longer body fluids are pulled towards

31:46

the lower part of your body. These fluids

31:48

sort of shift around and accumulate more in

31:50

the upper chest and head than they do

31:53

normally on earth. Our noses, we

31:55

feel this sort of congestion and it

31:57

does feel very much like that high

31:59

pressure. that you get in your head if you've got a heavy

32:01

cold, that kind of thing. And it

32:03

takes a few days or really weeks,

32:05

I suppose, completely to finish. But I

32:07

felt normal after a few days when

32:10

this fluid, I think some of

32:12

it might be actually excreted as urine, but

32:14

a lot of it is just redistributed in

32:16

the body. We think a lot of it

32:18

goes from our blood vessels

32:20

into other parts of the tissues of the

32:22

body, for instance, but it redistributes and we

32:24

feel much more normal again. But yes, it

32:27

has this huge knock-on effect, so I was

32:29

aware of some of those things,

32:31

but we've learnt so much more in recent times. Muscle

32:34

and bone loss is often due to the fact that

32:36

we're not stressing our muscles and bones. Space

32:39

radiation is another thing that I was warned about

32:41

and certainly I'd read that some of

32:43

the early astronauts had sensed

32:45

little light flashes in their retinas.

32:47

And I saw those too.

32:50

They're protected on Earth by our

32:53

own atmosphere and also the Earth's magnetic

32:55

field. But once outside of

32:57

the atmosphere, we don't get that protection

32:59

anymore, so we get a lot more

33:01

radiation through the spacecraft. And in Soyuz,

33:03

the spacecraft I used to get to the space

33:05

station, that was much less shielded by

33:07

all the equipment and so on around

33:09

us. And so that radiation could actually

33:12

come through the walls. In terms of what you're

33:14

describing then, it seems like you were made aware

33:16

of all of these things, these gravitational changes to

33:19

your body and these cosmic radiations, but there wasn't

33:21

so much a plan or a treatment. It was

33:23

just keep an eye out for it and if

33:25

it gets bad, do we have to send

33:27

you back to Earth? Well, the fluid shift, yes.

33:30

I mean, your body does adapt to that, but

33:32

we had these thick elastic straps around the tops

33:34

of our legs to help us feel

33:36

a bit better about it. Radiation

33:38

we had monitors, but yes, of course, that's not

33:41

actually helping you. There are some things that we

33:43

were semi-prepared for. So things like gut microflora, I

33:45

was aware was going to be different. We didn't

33:47

know much about it then. I don't think we

33:49

know a huge amount about it now really in

33:51

terms of how it changes in the

33:54

world. But I knew that I was going to be eating

33:56

sterile food, for instance. It's a long life kind of food.

33:59

There's going to be a different mind. flora around in

34:01

the spacecraft itself in

34:03

terms of making sure that we didn't take

34:05

extra bugs with us into space. That was

34:07

one of the reasons why our skin was washed in

34:10

alcohol. So yeah we were aware of a

34:12

lot of this stuff but yes how to actually improve

34:15

our health we're still really I

34:17

think quite at the beginning stages

34:19

of helping astronauts. And so

34:21

that kind of leads us to the future then

34:23

if we're going to spend so much more time

34:25

in space if we're hoping to mine the moon

34:27

and colonize Mars it seems like we're going to

34:29

have to have a lot more attention

34:32

paid towards treating space-based

34:34

problems with the body because if you're

34:36

stuck midway between here and Mars you

34:38

can't just nip back down to earth

34:40

to treat something. Yes I think we've

34:42

really got to do is make sure that we

34:45

do a lot more monitoring in the early stages

34:47

to detect what astronauts

34:49

are going through so that we

34:51

might not be able to fix their health

34:53

problems once they become a real problem. But

34:56

if we can be alert to things that

34:58

might be going and I'll say wrong in

35:00

this instance let's assume that we have worked

35:02

out that this would be a negative for

35:04

them that we can stop things from getting

35:06

too bad because of course we won't have

35:08

whole-body MRI scanners on Mars for the first

35:10

two astronauts who go up there. We may

35:12

have some kind of diagnostic equipment and

35:14

artificial intelligence may well help quite

35:16

a lot but they're going

35:18

to have to be really very

35:20

very self-sufficient with very little instrumentation

35:23

very little consumables to replace. Helen

35:25

Charman. Now as Helen said the

35:28

current medical limitations on spacecraft mean that much

35:30

like on Earth an ounce of prevention is

35:32

worth a pound of cure so

35:34

keeping spacefarers in tip-top condition will

35:36

prolong their ability to function and

35:38

a huge part of that is

35:40

maintaining circadian rhythm. Humans function best

35:42

on a strict regimen our bodies have evolved

35:44

to perform certain functions based on their innate

35:46

sense of time of day but

35:49

the 24-hour day that we've evolved to sync

35:51

to doesn't exist in space or on

35:53

the moon or Mars so

35:55

how much will not being on Earth affect

35:57

our human bodies in this regard? a

36:00

trip down to Cambridge University's Institute

36:02

of Astronomy to speak to public

36:04

astronomer Matt Bothwell. It depends where

36:06

we are really. The human body

36:08

has obviously evolved to live on

36:10

this 24 hour cycle and really

36:13

what we have to do is just do our

36:15

best to simulate that 24 hour cycle because if

36:17

you get too far away from that our bodies

36:19

get pretty unhappy. So astronauts on

36:21

the International Space Station for example, they zip

36:23

round the earth every 90 minutes. Something

36:26

like 16 sunrises every single day.

36:29

The way they stay sane is to

36:31

simulate artificially a 24 hour cycle and

36:33

so they stay on GMT, the lights

36:35

get brighter at 6 in the morning,

36:37

the lights dim and get orange at

36:39

night and so even though they have

36:41

16 sunrises a day they still get

36:43

this 24 hour cycle that their brains

36:45

need. With that being the case

36:47

then, if we are going to move further afield to

36:49

the moon and to Mars which have time

36:52

of days being longer or shorter than hours, are

36:54

we going to have to put in some interesting

36:57

kind of hacking our own biology in order to

36:59

be able to still function in those places? Matt

37:01

The answer is definitely yes for the moon.

37:03

I think interestingly for Mars we might be

37:05

fine. There are studies of circadian

37:08

rhythms. When you put humans in isolated

37:10

environments and don't give them cues about

37:12

what the light is doing, circadian rhythms

37:14

tend to settle down onto roughly 24

37:17

and a half hour cycle. Obviously

37:20

evolution hasn't bothered to give us an exactly

37:22

24 hour circadian rhythm cycle. We're not going

37:24

to close enough and then the cues from

37:26

the sunrise and the sunset just sort of

37:28

nudges us onto the schedule. So

37:30

our natural circadian rhythm of a whisker longer

37:33

than 24 hours is probably perfect for the Martian

37:35

day which is about 24 hours and 40 minutes.

37:38

So I think we can function on Mars absolutely

37:40

fine with no hacking needed. Neil Is the

37:42

case then of finding the people with that slightly

37:45

elongated circadian rhythm and shipping them off to the

37:47

red planet? Matt Right, exactly. There was

37:49

one study that came out of Harvard

37:51

a few years ago that suggested that

37:53

morning people have slightly shorter circadian rhythms

37:55

and evening people have slightly longer circadian

37:57

rhythms. So we just need to find all those people

37:59

that. light lying in and they'll make the

38:01

perfect Martians. Delightful to have found

38:04

a calling. That's in terms of the internal

38:06

human body clock but when it comes to

38:08

syncing up communications and satellites like that, are

38:10

we going to have to end up creating

38:12

time zones for different planets, do you think?

38:14

We absolutely will. We need time zones on Earth

38:17

because the Earth rotates around and the Moon and

38:19

Mars and anywhere we can conceivably go is all

38:21

going to be spinning around in the future so

38:23

we will definitely need different time zones. I

38:26

think one of the really interesting challenges that's

38:28

going to need to be solved is the

38:30

fact that time doesn't behave the same on

38:32

all planets. One of the big

38:34

takeaways from Einstein's theory of relativity is that

38:36

time goes a bit faster or slower depending

38:39

on what your local gravitational field is like

38:41

and on the Moon where gravity is only

38:43

about a sixth of the Earth's gravity

38:45

on the surface, time is going to

38:47

go ever so slightly faster. Not

38:50

that in a way that humans would notice but

38:52

if we want any future satellites doing GPS positioning

38:54

on the Moon, we're going to have to take

38:56

that into account. Do you think it

38:58

would be better to keep people on these

39:00

places so that they can fully get used

39:03

to this circadian rhythm we create or keeping

39:05

them there for a couple of months and

39:07

then shipping them back home? Because it seems

39:09

like if you're doing that you're kind of

39:11

constantly throwing people between these two things and

39:13

that could potentially be worse. That's a very

39:15

good point but I do wonder if maybe

39:17

the answer is it's only about the same as being

39:20

jetlagged or something. It might have the same effect of

39:22

if you fly to the States or fly to Australia,

39:24

you feel a bit rough for a few days while your

39:27

circadian rhythm catches up and then you're fine. So

39:29

maybe in the future we just have to deal with Moon lag for a

39:31

few days. So ideal astronauts

39:33

are businessmen that often fly

39:36

between here and the States and also get up

39:38

for very late in the morning. Exactly,

39:40

they're the future Martians I think. Take

39:43

that Matt Damon. The

39:46

importance of circadian rhythm in keeping

39:49

astronauts happy extends beyond the astronauts

39:51

themselves because what we all need

39:53

to eat and the food grown in space

39:55

will be from plants that again are in

39:57

no way used to having their internal clock

39:59

and gravity thrown out of work. So

40:02

what's the deal with space food? I've

40:04

been speaking with Jennifer Bromley, fellow

40:06

at Churchill College, Cambridge, and Chief

40:09

Scientific Officer at Vertical Future. Vertical

40:11

Future are an agri-tech technology and

40:13

data company and our mission is to

40:15

improve planetary and human health by building

40:17

a better food system. But

40:20

the way how our technology has

40:22

evolved means that it's now equally

40:24

applicable off Earth as well

40:26

as on Earth and we are now leading

40:29

a UK space agency funded project called

40:31

Autonomous Agriculture for Space Exploration.

40:34

What kind of crops are you finding work best

40:36

up in space? There's a variety

40:38

of different crops that have been grown

40:40

in space. So NASA have a very

40:42

active crop science group who have two

40:44

different growing facilities on the International Space

40:46

Station. They're called Veggie and the Advanced

40:49

Plant Habitat. And they've grown

40:51

a number of different crops from things like

40:53

lettuce through to peas. They've done radishes. And

40:56

I think my personal favourite is they've

40:59

grown chilies and the astronauts particularly enjoyed

41:01

eating those. When I think

41:03

of growing plants as me as a humble

41:05

earthling, I think of plants

41:07

being buried deep in nice thick soil

41:10

as a nutrient delivering mechanism. I assume

41:12

that is probably a bit tricky. Yeah,

41:15

with no gravity, it's

41:17

kind of difficult to deliver water and

41:19

nutrients to plants in space but it

41:21

is completely possible and has been very

41:23

much done already. So

41:25

typically on earth when we're looking

41:27

at vertical farming, we'll be typically

41:30

using no soil but we use

41:32

substrates like jute, we use recyclables,

41:34

matting, we use cococoia. But

41:37

that all requires water and

41:39

nutrients dissolved in the water to be delivered to

41:41

them in liquid form either by

41:44

hydroponics or aeroponics. Now that's going to

41:46

be a problem in space because the water will

41:48

bubble up and float around the

41:50

space station which is really not what you want

41:53

in an environment with a lot of electronics.

41:55

And so what has been pioneered are these

41:57

little plant growing pods that are those pillows.

42:00

And these pillows are essentially little watertight

42:02

units that contain

42:04

water-absorbent material. The plant

42:07

grows through a small

42:09

opening on the pillow. And

42:11

then there is a port, which

42:14

if anybody's had any sort of

42:17

interventions at hospital, you may recognize this

42:19

sort of port that they will be

42:21

injecting you with. And then

42:23

what's happening at the moment is the astronauts who

42:25

are running the experiments are

42:28

manually injecting nutrients dissolved

42:30

in water into the port, which

42:32

then delivers it to the absorbent

42:34

material around the plant root. So

42:37

very much a soil-like

42:40

scenario, but the

42:42

nutrients are provided externally through

42:44

the water that's provided, rather than it being

42:46

sort of ingrained in the soil already. And

42:48

as Matt Boswell was speaking about just a moment

42:51

ago, one of the biggest challenges about moving into

42:53

space and onto other planetary bodies is going to

42:55

be the shake-up to our circadian system, once

42:58

very much the same, perhaps even more driven

43:00

by the presence and position of light. How

43:03

are you going to deal with that? So the

43:05

joy of growing in a controlled environment means that

43:07

we can fully control when the lights turn on

43:09

and when the lights turn off, the intensity of

43:11

the light that we give them, and the wavelength

43:14

of the light that we give them. And

43:16

so we can just play tunes with that to our

43:18

heart's content. You can grow

43:21

plants under a 24-hour constant light.

43:23

They can start to look a bit funky. I'll

43:26

be quite frank. They're not big fans of it,

43:29

but it is possible to do it. But

43:31

if you can essentially replicate the kind of conditions

43:34

that you see on Earth, the

43:36

sort of environment that the plant has evolved

43:38

in, that's typically going to be the best

43:40

environment and lighting condition that you can give

43:43

to the plant in space. And

43:45

so with the lights that we've developed at Vertical Future,

43:47

we're able to do that. And that's

43:49

what we're putting on board the space station. We start

43:51

to work on the ISS. The

43:53

ISS works on GMT. It's

43:55

working on a 24-hour cycle, so keep going

43:58

on that. But you can start. to shift

44:00

plants away from the typical 24-hour

44:02

cycle. There was

44:04

some very interesting work that was carried

44:06

out by Professor Alex Webb and his

44:09

lab at Cambridge, where they looked at

44:11

what the optimum day length was for

44:13

a variety of different accessions of one

44:15

particular species. And they showed

44:17

that most plants do not have a bang-on

44:19

24-hour period. So

44:21

you can shift away, and you can make

44:24

a plant more productive. If you

44:26

do shift too much away from their optimal period,

44:28

then they will start to

44:31

reduce their yield volumes as well. So by

44:34

being able to turn the lights on and off when

44:36

we want to, though, it means that we can keep

44:38

the day to work for the plant, and

44:41

we can create the environment that the plant needs rather

44:43

than try and shift the plant onto the environment that

44:45

we want to inhabit. Jennifer Bromley.

44:47

And the importance of good food cannot be understated

44:49

when it comes to space exploration, because

44:51

a wholesome and hearty meal can, and I

44:54

speak from experience here, make or break the

44:56

quality of a day, and preserving

44:58

your mental health when you are isolated

45:00

in a cramped environment with the same

45:02

group of people for months at a

45:04

time is well essential for successful and

45:06

productive voyages. Kate Green is

45:08

the author of Once Upon a

45:10

Time I Lived on Mars, inspired

45:12

by a four-month stint inside a

45:14

simulated Martian habitat as part of

45:16

the High Seas program, an isolation

45:18

simulation which seeks to find out

45:20

the effect that spacecraft settings have

45:23

on individuals and groups of spacefarers.

45:25

But Kate found herself involved with

45:27

the program after becoming fascinated by

45:29

a very unusual question. Back

45:31

in 2011, I was scrolling Twitter, and

45:35

I came across an article. And the

45:37

basic premise was, why do astronauts like

45:39

to use a lot of Tabasco sauce

45:41

on their food? And was this gravity?

45:43

Was this boredom? Did they need the

45:45

spice to get something exciting in their

45:47

senses? And as I read

45:49

to the end of the article, I saw that there

45:51

was a call for participants in a simulated

45:54

Mars mission to actually study potential

45:57

future food systems. This was a

45:59

NASA. funded study and it would take

46:01

place in a dome on

46:03

Mauna Loa in Hawaii in the year 2013

46:06

and I thought, I have to apply to

46:08

this. So when that was the case,

46:10

when you applied and you were successful and they said,

46:13

we want your board, what was your

46:15

residence like? It was a

46:17

crew of six people total

46:19

and we spent four months

46:21

in isolation, mostly to test

46:24

these potential future food

46:26

systems. So for instance, we were looking at

46:28

the question of, are you going to get

46:30

bored with your food? And so

46:32

we had two different food systems that we tried out,

46:34

like the just add water and eat meals, which

46:36

is what astronauts on the ISS, the

46:38

International Space Station, eat, or

46:41

could we make our own

46:43

meals with preserved materials, so

46:45

preserved ingredients like dehydrated cheese

46:48

or dehydrated vegetables, flour, and that

46:50

we would just creatively cook up

46:52

a new meal, like make a

46:54

pizza or make a cake to

46:57

celebrate a birthday? And might this

46:59

sort of creative food system get

47:01

rid of some of that boredom? So we

47:03

were really looking at questions of food boredom

47:05

as the fundamental study, but there were a

47:08

ton of other studies participated in studies, research

47:10

that we brought ourselves and also research

47:12

that other researchers gave to us to

47:15

be participants in and produce data for.

47:18

So what was your preferred beer of choice then? I

47:20

would go down to the kitchen and

47:23

I would make myself an omelet

47:26

in the style of Julia Child, the French

47:28

omelet. I would use the somehow

47:30

delicious powdered eggs. It was actually these

47:32

powdered eggs were kind of a miracle,

47:35

the way that they're made, almost like

47:37

slow batch dehydration of a mixed up

47:39

egg. And I

47:41

would rehydrate that and

47:43

sprinkle rehydrated cheddar

47:45

cheese and parsley

47:47

on top, salt and pepper. I

47:49

would have Earl Grey tea and

47:52

a thin crisps with a layer

47:54

of rehydrated butter and a jam.

47:56

And I loved this meal so much I would sit there

47:58

and I would look out for a beer. the one

48:00

and only window we had onto the red

48:02

rocky vista of Mauna Loa and

48:04

imagine actually being

48:08

back on Earth. It sounds like

48:10

a genuinely positive experience and something

48:12

that everyone handled really well and

48:15

so I don't want to sow any seeds of doubt here

48:17

but I do feel compelled to ask do you think there

48:19

is an upper limit? Do you think

48:21

if you got to say a year, be like no get me out?

48:24

Well the high seas project did

48:26

increase the amount of time the

48:28

crews were under isolation so there was

48:30

an eight month mission and then a year

48:33

long mission and that year long mission

48:35

did endure significant difficulty with

48:37

the personality and like crew

48:39

cohesion there was some breakdown

48:41

so it's kind of unclear

48:43

if there is an upper limit

48:45

or what sort of environment could

48:47

be sort of engineered or designed

48:50

to maybe increase the amount

48:52

of time that people are in

48:54

isolated environments so in a productive

48:56

and successful way but also like

48:58

how you select the people to

49:01

do that. I mean these are actually

49:03

still open questions that are being looked at. NASA

49:05

has studied human adaptation in

49:07

space and one of the

49:10

things is humans have evolved to be

49:12

adaptable to a changing environment and when

49:14

you're on a long space mission you

49:16

have an environment that more or less

49:18

stays the same and there are other

49:21

ways, other experiences that also create something

49:23

similar. I think many of us experienced

49:25

this during the pandemic while you had

49:27

some ability to move about there was

49:29

a certain sameness to the day and

49:32

when you don't have an environment that's

49:34

changing that's constantly sort of like asking you

49:36

to adapt and evolve like a very

49:38

serious kind of boredom can set

49:40

in that maybe is difficult even

49:43

for the people who think that

49:45

they don't get bored to identify and

49:47

so one thing that is actually

49:49

really important is to make sure

49:51

that you can mix up your

49:53

environment, change things up and find

49:55

surprises, find those things that challenge

49:57

you and make you want to change in a way that's

49:59

more than adapt and grow because those are

50:01

things that as it is

50:04

now space living systems don't offer

50:06

a ton of that but it might

50:08

be a good idea to have those included

50:11

in any space mission. That was

50:13

Kate Green. So taking all of

50:15

this into consideration the health care,

50:17

body clock and psychological stresses how

50:19

much will the impact of space

50:22

affect what is becoming a race

50:24

to commercialize space? We have talks

50:26

of civilians, even space hotels with

50:28

the only current constraints on who is eligible

50:30

to go being the size of the customers

50:33

wallet. What impact will the

50:35

mercilessly harsh conditions in space have on

50:37

these endeavors? I've been speaking

50:39

with astronomer at Fifth Star Labs and

50:41

co-host of the Awesome Astronomy podcast Jenny

50:43

Millard. I think it's really

50:45

gonna influence the type of adventures

50:48

the average Joe goes on. But if I

50:50

feel like for the short jaunts into space

50:53

you know the likes of Blue Origin and

50:55

New Shepherds where it's an 11 minute flight,

50:57

it's a parabolic flight so you're just hopping

50:59

up and then you're coming back down, you're

51:02

in microgravity for three to four minutes. I

51:04

feel like most people can handle that and

51:06

I feel like for a couple

51:08

of days maybe you could cope in space for

51:11

a couple of days perhaps you know in orbit

51:13

around the earth in a small capsule. But I

51:15

think it's when we come to the longer journeys

51:17

where you're maybe on a space station for a

51:19

few weeks, you're on the surface

51:21

of the moon for a couple of

51:24

weeks. That's then really where we're gonna

51:26

have to start thinking carefully about who

51:28

can go and do these things. There's

51:30

going to be physical limitations. I

51:33

mean how are people going to cope

51:35

being on the moon for more than

51:37

two weeks and suddenly having two weeks

51:39

of complete darkness, having no

51:41

sight of their home planet. I think

51:43

that might really play with people. And

51:45

then of course moving on to Mars.

51:47

I mean Mars is, let's

51:49

be honest, probably at least a

51:51

century into the future for like the average

51:53

person to go. With Mars you know it'll

51:55

be seven to nine months to get there,

51:58

at least three months on the surface. you've

52:00

got to wait for everything, all the planets to realign

52:02

to be able to get back. And

52:04

so, you know, it's a long time to

52:06

be cooped up with the same people. And

52:08

so I think it really is going to

52:10

direct the kind of commercialized space that we

52:12

see. I think we'll see a focus on

52:15

the shorter journeys rather than the longer ones.

52:18

If we are, as you say, accelerating towards

52:20

a point where regular schmucks like me can

52:22

get into space, do you think there may

52:24

have to be some kind of governing ratifying

52:26

body that can decide whether or not you

52:28

are fit and able to do so? I

52:31

think that there will have to be some kind

52:33

of generally agreed upon rules. But then I think

52:35

there are generally agreed upon rules when it comes

52:38

to putting people on airplanes, you know. And

52:40

while there's no global body that kind of

52:42

medically tests people, there are these kind of

52:44

general rules that then the local health authorities

52:47

can then enforce and you know, you can

52:49

go get your checks and so on like

52:51

this. And so while I think there's going

52:53

to have to be some kind of general

52:56

body that will maybe come up with some

52:58

general rules, it is going to have

53:00

to be on an individual basis as well.

53:02

I think the psychological side is going

53:04

to be the most interesting because I

53:06

don't think the psychological side is going

53:08

to come in too much for the

53:10

short journeys when we progress eventually not

53:12

to just go into the moon for

53:14

a holiday, but when people are

53:16

working on the moon, you can almost imagine maybe

53:18

they go to the moon for six months and

53:20

then they come back for six months and then

53:22

they go again. It's like extreme shift work, something

53:24

like that. And we're really going

53:26

to have to consider all of the psychology

53:29

there. And then we start blurring the lines

53:31

between commercialisation and professionalism.

53:33

And I think the way the

53:36

space sector is going to evolve over the next decades and

53:38

centuries is going to be really interesting.

53:41

Jenny Millard. And that

53:43

was Will Tingle. And that's it for this

53:45

week. The Five Lives Science is back at

53:47

the same time next Sunday when cancer is

53:49

going to be under our microscope. A number

53:51

of high profile people have announced that they've

53:53

had a brush with the condition recently. So

53:55

we've decided to look at what it is,

53:57

who's getting it, what cancer is. that is

53:59

and why it happens and what in the

54:02

future we might be able to do about

54:04

it. Do join us. In

54:06

the meantime, if you'd like to get in

54:08

touch, it's 5livescience at bbc.co.uk. Until

54:11

then, from me, Chris Smith, thank you for listening and

54:13

goodbye. BBC

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