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Expert: Mars Astronauts Would Lose Teeth

Posted by Hemos on from the i'll-gum-ya-to-death dept.

Ant wrote to us with a story on Discovery about the long term consequences of manned and "womanned" missions to Mars - lots of research about bone-weakening effects of zero G environments, with tooth loss high on the list.

2 of 323 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Bug in Slashdot methinks :P by Talez · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    The space is exactly where the input field broke the URL up onto the next line...

    Very perculiar indeed :P

    Talez

  2. Re:evolution by Asic+Eng · · Score: 1, Offtopic
    Well, from archeaology lectures I remember the claim that humans are essentially genetically unchanged for the last 40000 years, so any adaptation of this kind would take a very long time.

    Also we have to keep in mind that evolution does not necessarily work to improve the species(1), it's not a planned process in any way. For it to advance the appearance of certain features, people who have those features need to have more descendants than those who do not.

    I don't think this is happening at all, at least not in western societies. Since pretty much everybody has access to sufficient food and shelter the likelihood of propagating one's genes seems to be almost entirely tied to inclination and maybe (somewhat) to attractiveness.

    Today it's so much easier for us to change our environment than to adapt to it, I don't think evolution will have much of a role to play anymore.

    (1) Think of the many species with ridiculous and impractical horns or tail feathers etc.