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If we wish to colonize another world, finding a planet with a gravitational field that humans can survive and thrive under will be crucial. If its gravity is too strong our blood will be pulled down into our legs, our bones might break, and we could even be pinned helplessly to the ground.
Finding the gravitational limit of the human body is something that's better done before we land on a massive new planet. Now, in a paper published on the pre-print server arXiv, three physicists, claim that the maximum gravitational field humans could survive long-term is four-and-a-half times the gravity on Earth.
Or, at least you could if you are an Icelandic strongman – and Game of Thrones monster – who can walk with more than half a metric ton on your back. For mere mortals, the researchers say, it would need to be a little weaker.
[...] For the maximum gravity at which we could take a step, the team turned to Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, an Icelandic strongman who once walked five steps with a 1430 pound log on his back, smashing a 1,000-year-old record[*].
[*] YouTube video.
What's the Maximum Gravity We Could Survive?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Saturday September 22 2018, @05:48PM
Zero.
There may be higher minimum limits for healthy multi-generational, but centrifugal cities can make up any difference needed if we're ambitious enough. And it gets a lot easier if we just need intermittent exposure, or for key developmental stages (gestation? Infancy? Puberty?) Or are in freefall to start with - huge centrifuges are a lot more complicated to build on a planet.
At this point though, we have basically no idea what healthy minimums might be. We need to do research, and currently we have no facilities to do so. All we have right now is Earth and the ISS in freefall, anything in between would require establishing biology labs on other planets, or more likely, orbital centrifuges. Until we do that, everything else is just pure speculation.
We know that freefall (and/or orbital radiation exposure) causes health and developmental problems in lab animals that don't exist on Earth. But with only two data points we really can't say anything whatsoever of the shape of the curve between them. Could be serious problems start appearing anywhere below 0.99g. Could be just the orientation and types of motion present in even 0.01g is enough to eliminate virtually all problems. At this point all we have is wild conjecture from pet theories about what exactly is causing the problems.