Let's say a human were to live most of his life in a 200 G environment but then suddenly enter a 1 g environment, What would be the effects to his body and will this give him the ability to carry large objects in the 1g environment with ease?
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5$\begingroup$ 200g is quite the acceleration. It'll get you to escape velocity in just a few seconds. How are these humans structures to withstand this enormous acceleration? It's hard to determine what the effects may be without knowing this. I reckon that it'll be somewhat synonymous with our experience in a 1/200g environment. $\endgroup$– user44399Commented Jan 19, 2019 at 13:21
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1$\begingroup$ Humans would need to be radically restructured to function in 200g. Imagine your head - just your head - weighing two tons. How would your body hold itself up, or in one piece? Not to mention the immense air pressure. I don't know offhand what the long-term habitation limit is for humans, but it's far short of that. $\endgroup$– CadenceCommented Jan 19, 2019 at 13:25
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1$\begingroup$ His skin capillaries will burst immediately to start with. His lungs, being used to significantly higher pressure, will not inflate. After that it'll start to get messy $\endgroup$– nzamanCommented Jan 19, 2019 at 13:26
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$\begingroup$ Welcome to worldbuilding. Please take the tour and visit the help center to make yourself familiar with our community and its standards. $\endgroup$– L.Dutch ♦Commented Jan 19, 2019 at 13:44
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1$\begingroup$ 200G is higher than the surface gravity of the sun, your not having water based life at 200g $\endgroup$– JohnCommented Jan 19, 2019 at 13:53
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6 Answers
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My weight at 1G is 235 pounds
My weight at 200G is 23.5 tons.
If my bones were made of the strongest steel, they'd collapse like beer cans. There isn't a tendon I can imagine without the help of magic that could hold two bones together. My brain would need to be made out of carbon fiber just to keep from collapsing of its own weight and killing me.
Humans evolved in our environment and can't simply be plopped someplace else
If such a planet could exist (dubious), the creatures evolved thereupon wouldn't look at all like humans. They'd likely look more like amoeba. Incredibly low to the ground, very spread out to distribute the weight. Humans couldn't survive at 200G long enough to develop any special physiology to adapt. And they couldn't develop physiology to adapt even if they wanted to.
But, would they have super strength?
If you ignore reality and throw common sense out the window, then yes, they would have super strength — being capable of lifting 200X the weight that an average human could lift.
But I personally believe the yellow-sun routine used by Superman to be more believable than growing up on a 200G planet. People know too much about gravity now days.
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A human cannot ever live in 200G
Fatal acceleration for humans averages at about 65Gs, even assuming ideal body orientation relative to the acceleration. Note that this is for instantaneous, momentary acceleration - for acceleration that is sustained for even a few seconds the limit is much lower.
Just to give an idea of the effect of even momentary high acceleration, quoting from the source linked above:
The devastating car crash of Princess Diana of Wales in 1997 was estimated to range somewhere between 70–100 g's. This accident was intense enough to pull the pulmonary artery from her heart.
The premise of the question is invalid, as it is not possible for a human to ever live at an acceleration even close to 200G. Some people pass out after a few seconds of acceleration at 3G even, while others can maintain consciousness at 6G for several seconds, as noted here. While some authors have used the concept of people adapted from high-G worlds being "supermen" when operating in 1G environments (eg the Pyrrans are adapted to a 2G world in Harry Harrison's Deathworld series) there is no existing medical data regarding whether this would actually be viable even with genetic engineering.
answered Jan 19, 2019 at 13:56
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$\begingroup$ But let's just say by fate a creature was born in a planet or a place with 200g gravity and the we transfer that creature to a place where the gravity is only at 1 what would be the things this creature would be capable of? $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 19, 2019 at 16:03
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The only way for a human to spend most of their life under 200g is a very special setup.
You need a pregnant woman to be in a ship doing a flyby close to a black hole at a relative speed of 0.99c, with the ship accelerating at 1g. The ship must reach the periapsis of the flyby as the baby's head is coming out.
Neither mother nor baby will be able to return to 1G alive. But hey, the baby will technically have spent most of their life (even if less than a second) under 200G!
answered Jan 19, 2019 at 14:17
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2$\begingroup$ Technically, the baby is already alive before birth. You would have to have conception occur at periapsis for this to apply. $\endgroup$– GryphonCommented Jan 19, 2019 at 20:52
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$\begingroup$ @Gryphon I'm pro-choice but I understand your point of view. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 19, 2019 at 21:39
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As others have said, it is impossible for a human being to live in a surface gravity of 200g.
In another thread I suggested that the limit for long term habitability for humans would probably be about 1.25g to 1.50g according to the limited experimental data available at the moment.
Tolerable range of surface gravities for interplanetary colonists?1
As I wrote there:
As far as I know the only worlds in our solar system with higher surface gravities than Earth are Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune, and they don't have solid surfaces.
So the three ways in this solar system to test human long term tolerance of higher gravity are:
1) Put people in balloons at various levels in the atmospheres of giant planets for long periods.
2) Test people in centrifuges for long periods.
3) Put humans in rockets that can accelerate and decelerate at higher than 1g for long periods of time.
Only the second method is plausible in the immediate future so it is possible that the answer to the question of the highest surface gravity that humans could survive in for their whole lives might not be known with certainty for decades or centuries in the future.
If the quite survivable surface gravity of 1g is divided by 200, the result is a surface gravity of 0.005g. I wonder if there is any information about the physical abilities of humans in 0.005g.
A few humans have spent short periods of a few days on the surface of the Moon, where the surface gravity is 0.1654g. They spent their time either cooped up in cramped spaceship cabins or else wearing bulky spacesuits to protect them from the deadly surface conditions.
Spaceships in orbit or travelling to the Moon are in microgravity or a micro-g environment, where the force of gravity is less than on Earth's surface. They seem to be in zero gravity, because they are in free fall in their orbits and not resisting the pull of gravity.
No doubt it would be possible, at a cost of hundred of millions or billions of dollars, to create a relatively large environment with a surface gravity of 0.005g, to test the abilities of humans in a 0.005g environment.
That would give a way to calculate approximately the increased abilities of a strange, nonhuman, life form adapted to 200g surface gravity in a 1g surface gravity environment.
answered Jan 19, 2019 at 18:02
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The limit for humans is about 3-4 earth gravities.
At much greater gravities our muscles simply couldn't lift us. At 90 gravities our bones start to crack while standing still, 10 if running.
So, whatever being wouldn't be human, and they can lift whatever you want. Presumably they've had massive amounts of genetic engineering, and can have any capabilities you desire within science.
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The Orville actually just did a really good episode on this. Let's say a species had adapted to a much higher gravity and suddenly moved into a lighter environment. Their bodies would eventually adapt to the lower gravity environment like our own astronauts do on the ISS making them much weaker when then went back into their own environment. Until that happened though they would essentially have super strength.
