It was a dreary, drizzly day near Parma, Italy, when two scientists first took on the Wall of Death.
But exercise physiologists Gaspare Pavei and Valentina Natalucci weren’t doing motorcycle stunts — they were testing out a technique to run on the moon.
If the team’s calculations were correct, future moon dwellers running fast enough inside a cylinder would be able to stay on the wall, rather than float down to the ground, says Alberto Minetti, a physiologist at the University of Milan. That suggests the technique could one day offer lunar inhabitants a new means of Earth-like exercise, some 384,000 kilometers from our home planet.
Because the moon has only about a sixth of Earth’s gravity, there’s a world of difference between exercising there and here. Lower gravity means people’s bodies don’t experience the same physical stresses they do on Earth. Pounding the pavement during a run or doing pushups at Earth gravity, or 1 g, builds muscle and strengthens bone. But on the moon or in space, muscles atrophy and bones become brittle. Just six months in space, researchers have shown, can damage the bones as much as a decade of aging (SN: 6/30/22). Scientists are looking for ways to counteract these detrimental effects, Minetti says.
2024-05-24 10:30:00
Article from www.sciencenews.org