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Will astronauts traveling to Mars remember much of it? That's the question concerning University of California, Irvine scientists probing a phenomenon called "space brain."
UCI's Charles Limoli and colleagues found that exposure to highly energetic charged particles – much like those found in the galactic cosmic rays that will bombard astronauts during extended spaceflights – causes significant long-term brain damage in test rodents, resulting in cognitive impairments and dementia.
Their study appears today in Nature's Scientific Reports. It follows one last year showing somewhat shorter-term brain effects of galactic cosmic rays. The current findings, Limoli said, raise much greater alarm. (Link to study: www.nature.com/articles/srep34774)
"This is not positive news for astronauts deployed on a two-to-three-year round trip to Mars," said the professor of radiation oncology in UCI's School of Medicine. "The space environment poses unique hazards to astronauts. Exposure to these particles can lead to a range of potential central nervous system complications that can occur during and persist long after actual space travel – such as various performance decrements, memory deficits, anxiety, depression and impaired decision-making. Many of these adverse consequences to cognition may continue and progress throughout life."
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 06 2017, @12:50PM
Actually, for high energy cosmic rays, you want polyethelene (garbage bag material, but maybe 1/2 inch thick) instead of lead. Lead scatters high energy particles into a cascade of many lower, but still damaging energy particles; polyethelene doesn't cause as much scatter and absorbs as well as lead.
BTW, Gagarin first man in space, a Russian production, is on Netflix streaming. Some pretty clear propaganda in there (i.e. "he only has 10 days food, water and oxygen" - like hell he had 10 days of oxygen and CO2 scrubbing capability in that capsule, or even that much water for that matter...) but, it is a cool presentation (subtitled) nonetheless. They made a big deal of "nobody knows if the human brain can function in zero gravity" and even some speculation if a person in space looking down at earth might lose their mind. In some sense, that last one is true - but in a good way.
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