The Science of Monsters

Space travel as depicted in Alien may not yet be possible, but when it is, how would we prepare for it? In the 2017 book Vacation Guide to the Solar System: Science for the Savvy Space Traveler! authors Olivia Koski and Jana Grcevich explore what travel to space would be like. They argue that although humans haven’t set foot on another planet yet it’s very possible that scientists will find a way for the human body to withstand extreme radiation, long journeys, and difficult conditions. Preparing for space travel would, and does, require some very specific training. Anyone going into space would need to be medically fit, including having good vision and a healthy blood pressure in order to avoid problems in space. Astronauts now, and presumably in the future, go through training in how to work and move in microgravity.²

What does living in space do to the human body? Weightlessness causes muscles to atrophy and the skeleton to deteriorate. Lack of gravity causes fluid distribution changes. Initially those traveling in space get “moon face” from the rush of fluids to their upper half and can have changes in vision, smell, and balance. Eventually, fluids redistribute and astronauts regain their natural look and functions. Another common ailment from space travel is called space adaptation syndrome. It’s similar to motion sickness and can cause nausea, vomiting, lethargy, and headaches. It typically lasts about seventy-two hours while the body adjusts.

There is so much we don’t know yet about space. To learn more about some of the theories being studied, we interviewed Allen Lipke, a former science teacher who worked at a lab that studied dark matter and neutrinos. Sometimes we can learn about space from things here on Earth.

Kelly:“I know you were a science teacher but can you tell us a little bit about the lab you worked in?”

Allen Lipke: “Certainly. The neutrino lab is an abandoned iron ore mine that is about half a mile below the surface. The lab started in 1982 and they were doing research on the possibility of protons decaying.”

Meg:“What did they discover through that research?”

Allen Lipke: “That was of interest to the particle physics community of that time but no one ever found one to disintegrate. They’re more stable than what we expected them to be.”

Kelly:“How does that relate to neutrons?”

Allen Lipke: “Neutrons, kind of the sister to the proton, is very unstable in the sense that neutrons not found in the nucleus of an atom have a half-life of about fifteen minutes. So, in fifteen minutes a neutron is going to decay into a proton, an electron, and something else. That something else is a neutrino.”

Meg:“That’s why it’s called the neutrino lab!”

Allen Lipke: “That understanding goes way back to about 1930.”

Kelly:“I knew I should have paid more attention in science!”

Allen Lipke: “Wolfgang Pauli proposed a theory dealing with the idea that we’re missing something in this research. There’s something we’re not seeing. It took until the 1950s to actually confirm that neutrinos existed.”

Meg:“So it took twenty years to get that research going?”

Allen Lipke: “Well, then they fell out of interest entirely until the 1990s.”

Meg:“Is that when the underground lab in Northern Minnesota came about?”

Allen Lipke: “In the late 1990s a lab was proposed to be put into the Soudan Underground mine but in order to do so they had to build a chamber that would be in alignment with Formulab down by Chicago.”

The Soudan Underground Lab.

Kelly:“Why did it need to align with another lab?”

Allen Lipke: “There was a beam that was projected from Formulab underground through the surface of the earth. At a point in Wisconsin they estimated the beam was about six miles below the surface of the Earth. Because the Earth is round, by the time the beam got to Soudan it would be right on the middle of the detector.”

Meg:“What did the detector consist of?”

Allen Lipke: “It was made out of steel plates. They were hung kind of like big stop signs. They were twenty-five feet in diameter but in the shape of a stop sign. There was eleven million pounds of these steel plates put into position in the chamber. In between the steel plates we put in plastic.”

Kelly:“What was the plastic for?”