Super Strength possible?

[Broomstick]

From what I've seen, the data is inconclusive on what would happen with raising people in a higher-g environment.

A small increase in gravity will, I am guessing, produce a slightly stronger human being with a greater ratio of muscle to fat due to the energy requirements of such an environment being slightly higher. At some point, however, the increase will go from promoting muscle to causing problems. Where that cut-off is I don't know. As for stunting growth - impossible to say. There is no evidence that weight-bearing exercise stunts growth (assuming the weight-bearing isn't enough to damage growth plates or otherwise cause damage) and should result in stronger bones overall but, again, there's probably a point of diminishing returns then on to detrimental effects. Greater weight/gravity will slightly compress the spine, but that shouldn't be greater than a few centimeters at most.

Keep in mind that the human body is somewhat adaptable in regards to the environment and will be able to compensate to some degree for environments with gravity slightly above or below that of Earth. The experiences of pilots shows that the human body is capable of building up some tolerance to higher g-forces although that evidence is inconclusive as pilots do not spend long periods of time under high g. NASA has done some work with volunteers in centrifuges, but only for a day or so at a time and centrifuges, particularly small ones, don't duplicate planetary gravity exactly and thus may not give the most reliable results for purposes of answering this question. Likewise, raising small animals in a centrifuge may or may not sufficiently duplicate the effects of higher gravity such as you'd get on a planet to really give a good answer. Not to mention animals vary in their adaptability to things, and when it comes to weight/mass/gravity size does matter.

[Purple]

I don't think compressing the body via gravity is important. What is important is the blood issue. As the gravity rises a human heart just can't pump blood with sufficient pressure into your brain. Now at 2G's that might be tolerable. At 4 G's not so much. That's why pilots have to carry G suits. So what happens is that the first few generations will just have loads of heart problems. But as time passes they will adapt. Now, how do you adapt to said problems? Well, you can't grow a new or better heart. And you can't drop the required blood pressure. So the only solution is to make the body shorter to compensate. And this does not have to happen over evolutionary scales either. In a 4 G environment naturally shorter individuals will tend to have longer life spans and more energy. So even across a few generations we might already start to see short people being more and more prominent.

Thing is when the body grows shorter that means all of it decreases proportionally. So that means that the limbs will be shorter too. Shorter limbs = less leverage for lifting stuff. In the end, my guess is that we would end up with quite a steep cutoff. On one end you get little positive effect. Maybe somewhat stronger bones or something as broomstick already said. Cross the line however and you would end up with a sickly and weak low endurance dwarf.

At least that's my interpretation of the evidence.

[gamer]

So I guess the problems with super strength are:

power generation- How are you getting the energy to power your muscles to lift giant pillers or punch through armored steel. Which reminds me a chimp is 7 times stronger than a man and a gorilla is believed to be around 30 times stronger yet to my knowledge, at least in regards to the chimp do not eat more than humans, a gorilla is a big eater, eating around 18kgs of vegetation a day. I wonder what kind of energy consumption figures are we looking for when we get into strength ranges like punching through tanks and throwing trucks?

heat generation- when it comes to insane feats of strength like punching the ground and creating craters how do you deal with the waste heat generated, also how much heat would be generated? In Prototype I noticed all the super strong infected and your character all glowed like candles when the thermal vision was on, and one of the devs remarked that all that infected flesh covering the buildings is so hot its causing the buildings to decay at a rapid pace.

weight- when it comes to lifting objects significantly heavier than yourself how do you balance? How do you not just cut through the object with your hands? If you throw a tank how are you not flying backwards? In prototype everyone possessing super strength is also incredibly heavy, heavy enough to shatter concrete with a step or kill everything within 50 feet by jumping off a building and landing.

Durability- how does your body not fall apart?

[Batman]

I'd say it depends on how much in the way of superstrength you want. An order of magnitude or less-may be doable with cybernetics and biological enhancements (though I'm dubious about that). Superman level strength? No way in hell, and that's ignoring the 'no way in hell can he lift the ship like that even if he is that strong' issue. There's a reason the forcefield superstrength/invulnerability thing was put forward.

[gamer]

I'd say it depends on how much in the way of superstrength you want. An order of magnitude or less-may be doable with cybernetics and biological enhancements (though I'm dubious about that). Superman level strength? No way in hell, and that's ignoring the 'no way in hell can he lift the ship like that even if he is that strong' issue. There's a reason the forcefield superstrength/invulnerability thing was put forward.

Superman level strength is just stupid, can he move planets or something?

I mean super strength on the level of that picture in the OP or at least the ability to tear a man apart or at the highest end punching into tank armor or lifting or even throwing a tank.

[Batman]

During the Silver Age, Clark's standard solution to celestial objects being on a collision course with Earth was to push Earth out of the way.
And as has been pointed out already, whether or not the OP picture requires Superman strength, it definitely requires technobabble. You trying to lift it that way is going to result in you standing within a lot of marble rubble loking stupid.

[Broomstick]

I don't think compressing the body via gravity is important. What is important is the blood issue. As the gravity rises a human heart just can't pump blood with sufficient pressure into your brain. Now at 2G's that might be tolerable. At 4 G's not so much. That's why pilots have to carry G suits.

At least for piloting purposes, you don't see g-suits until around you get past 6 g's. Of course, that is for someone in a seat position as opposed to standing or attempting to run.

The NASA experiments I alluded to earlier show that fatigue is a major symptom of living in a high g environment and their volunteers spent a lot of time lying down and napping. So, in a hypothetical 2 g environment folks may have to re-evaluate just how much work could be done vs. how much resting time is required.

So what happens is that the first few generations will just have loads of heart problems. But as time passes they will adapt. Now, how do you adapt to said problems? Well, you can't grow a new or better heart. And you can't drop the required blood pressure. So the only solution is to make the body shorter to compensate.

Incorrect. That is not the only possible solution. The body could evolve a better blood return system - look at giraffes, they have that hugely long neck that requires an insane blood pressure in order to get blood up to their heads, yet also have to moderate that pressure once it gets to the skull to keep it from causing brain damage (and yet another system to deal with pressure and volume when the animal lowers it's head below heart level). They also have adaptations in the blood vessels of their extremities to prevent blood pooling. Actually, so do we - just much less intense. Those adaptations are the reason that humans in zero-g have fluids shift from their lower bodies to their upper bodies, without the effects of gravity those blood-return and control mechanisms result in things like facial puffiness.

You actually CAN increase blood pressure considerably in a human being, the problem is the long term effects. It's not just the brain, organs like the kidneys can also be damaged by it. So you might wind up with colonists dying of kidney failure rather than cardiac problems. Or they might be prone to both. The giraffe shows that mammals can evolve mechanisms to allow immense blood pressures where needed yet also protect vulnerable organs but that's not going to happen overnight.

Certainly, in a high g environment there would be intense pressure to select for humans with more efficient blood-return and pressure-control in the limbs, and since it's already a trait of humanity there are probably individuals already possessing greater or lesser degrees of it. A system as sophisticated as the giraffe's would, of course, require a long time to evolve in humans so the only practical way to get that would be genetic engineering.

That, combined with shorter people having an advantage in such an environment, would mean a shift in physical appearance in such a population. Actually, a savvy colonizing agency would test potential colonists for g tolerance, height, and efficiency of the legs at controlling/returning blood to the upper body prior to sending people out so even before the colony is created some selection of individuals could occur.

Thing is when the body grows shorter that means all of it decreases proportionally.

No, it doesn't.

The biggest factor is likely the distance between heart and head. The limbs are important, too, of course, but it's the heart-to-head distance that's most crucial. Short necks and the heart resting high in the chest might be more important than limb length. Yes, short people tend to have short limbs, but the proportion of limb length to torso varies in humans already. Our hypothetical colonists might wind up with short torsos and relatively long limbs

Shorter limbs = less leverage for lifting stuff.

Limb strength isn't just a matter of bone length - other factors such as the angle of muscle and tendon attachments are also significant. This is one reason chimpanzees are so much stronger than human beings - it's not just limb length, how their muscles attach to their limbs is also different and also affects their leverage. The downside to stronger muscles might be decreased dexterity, though, both because of how muscles attach and the increased stiffening of connective tissue to stabilize the joints. Our distant ancestors might have traded some limb strength for increased manual dexterity, resulting in humans being relatively weak for their size compared to other primates.

[Simon_Jester]

So I guess the problems with super strength are:

power generation- How are you getting the energy to power your muscles to lift giant pillers or punch through armored steel. Which reminds me a chimp is 7 times stronger than a man and a gorilla is believed to be around 30 times stronger yet to my knowledge, at least in regards to the chimp do not eat more than humans, a gorilla is a big eater, eating around 18kgs of vegetation a day. I wonder what kind of energy consumption figures are we looking for when we get into strength ranges like punching through tanks and throwing trucks?

Probably comparable to the energy consumption figures needed to make artillery rounds punch through tanks, or to make gigantic cranes throw around trucks. In short, eating food is simply not going to provide the power source required- either the guy's got a built-in nuclear reactor, or there's a blatantly magical energy source powering his feats.

heat generation- when it comes to insane feats of strength like punching the ground and creating craters how do you deal with the waste heat generated, also how much heat would be generated? In Prototype I noticed all the super strong infected and your character all glowed like candles when the thermal vision was on, and one of the devs remarked that all that infected flesh covering the buildings is so hot its causing the buildings to decay at a rapid pace.

This depends on mechanism and exactly what is going on. Not all mechanical processes produce much waste heat. You get a lot of waste heat if combustion is involved, and if friction is involved. But things like a piston pushing a huge weight up a ramp don't necessarily generate much waste heat- at the cost of being relatively slow.

weight- when it comes to lifting objects significantly heavier than yourself how do you balance? How do you not just cut through the object with your hands? If you throw a tank how are you not flying backwards? In prototype everyone possessing super strength is also incredibly heavy, heavy enough to shatter concrete with a step or kill everything within 50 feet by jumping off a building and landing.

Although one would expect that if a person that heavy tried to move around- well. In urban areas they'd be constantly crashing through the floors of buildings and into the basement. Possibly also through sidewalks and into tunnels or the like. Concrete has a pretty high compression strength, remember- I did this calculation and you'd probably need something that weighs tens of tons to shatter significant amounts of it, even with a contact patch only about four inches by four inches square. Remember that cars and trucks don't shatter pavement, even though their contact area with the pavement is quite small and the vehicle's ground pressure is high enough that it would pretty much smash ordinary human tissue into paste.

[Purple]

I don't think compressing the body via gravity is important. What is important is the blood issue. As the gravity rises a human heart just can't pump blood with sufficient pressure into your brain. Now at 2G's that might be tolerable. At 4 G's not so much. That's why pilots have to carry G suits.

At least for piloting purposes, you don't see g-suits until around you get past 6 g's. Of course, that is for someone in a seat position as opposed to standing or attempting to run.

And than doing the whole stand up and run thing all day long, 24/7 for their entire life.

Incorrect. That is not the only possible solution. The body could evolve a better blood return system - look at giraffes, they have that hugely long neck that requires an insane blood pressure in order to get blood up to their heads, yet also have to moderate that pressure once it gets to the skull to keep it from causing brain damage (and yet another system to deal with pressure and volume when the animal lowers it's head below heart level). They also have adaptations in the blood vessels of their extremities to prevent blood pooling. Actually, so do we - just much less intense. Those adaptations are the reason that humans in zero-g have fluids shift from their lower bodies to their upper bodies, without the effects of gravity those blood-return and control mechanisms result in things like facial puffiness.

Evolve yes. But that is over evolutionary time scales. If you read my post you will notice I was all the time referring to short term multiple generation level adaptation. That means something like 3-4 generations at most. Over 500 years yes, we would evolve giraffe like blood systems. But over 150 years we would just see a lot of short people prospering in society as they are the ones that can get more work done.

No, it doesn't.

The biggest factor is likely the distance between heart and head. The limbs are important, too, of course, but it's the heart-to-head distance that's most crucial. Short necks and the heart resting high in the chest might be more important than limb length. Yes, short people tend to have short limbs, but the proportion of limb length to torso varies in humans already. Our hypothetical colonists might wind up with short torsos and relatively long limbs

Again, I was referring to the short term. As in short people = short limbs IRL right now. What you describe is what would eventually come out during evolution. Apples and oranges.

[Broomstick]

I don't think compressing the body via gravity is important. What is important is the blood issue. As the gravity rises a human heart just can't pump blood with sufficient pressure into your brain. Now at 2G's that might be tolerable. At 4 G's not so much. That's why pilots have to carry G suits.

At least for piloting purposes, you don't see g-suits until around you get past 6 g's. Of course, that is for someone in a seat position as opposed to standing or attempting to run.

And than doing the whole stand up and run thing all day long, 24/7 for their entire life.

People don't "stand up and run" 24/7 - and in this case they'd do a lot more lying around. Probably utilize a lot more automation for stuff, too. Small forklifts for lifting loads will be commonplace, as an example.

Incorrect. That is not the only possible solution. The body could evolve a better blood return system - look at giraffes, they have that hugely long neck that requires an insane blood pressure in order to get blood up to their heads, yet also have to moderate that pressure once it gets to the skull to keep it from causing brain damage (and yet another system to deal with pressure and volume when the animal lowers it's head below heart level). They also have adaptations in the blood vessels of their extremities to prevent blood pooling. Actually, so do we - just much less intense. Those adaptations are the reason that humans in zero-g have fluids shift from their lower bodies to their upper bodies, without the effects of gravity those blood-return and control mechanisms result in things like facial puffiness.

Evolve yes. But that is over evolutionary time scales. If you read my post you will notice I was all the time referring to short term multiple generation level adaptation. That means something like 3-4 generations at most. Over 500 years yes, we would evolve giraffe like blood systems.

It will take a LOT longer than 500 years to achieve that!

You missed my point that there is already variation among humans as to how efficient the cardiovascular system details work. That's why some people get varicose veins and some don't - varicose veins are a malfunction of the venous blood-return system in the legs. You choose your colonists based on criteria that indicate slightly better traits in the direction you want/need to go. 3-4 generations of selected breeding in an environment that actually does impact lifespan in a significant way can result in significant changes.

But over 150 years we would just see a lot of short people prospering in society as they are the ones that can get more work done.

No, you won't have many 2-meter giants in that crowd (for that matter, they aren't that common on Earth, either, if you consider the global population as a whole) but in 150 years you won't see a terribly drastic reduction in height, either, more a clustering around the low side of normal for humanity (which is already quite a range). The prospering short people will also be those with the additional beneficial traits already mentioned - short heart to head distance, better blood pressure control/organ resistance to high pressure, and better control systems for returning limb blood to the body core. The visible changes will not necessarily be the most important.

The biggest factor is likely the distance between heart and head. The limbs are important, too, of course, but it's the heart-to-head distance that's most crucial. Short necks and the heart resting high in the chest might be more important than limb length. Yes, short people tend to have short limbs, but the proportion of limb length to torso varies in humans already. Our hypothetical colonists might wind up with short torsos and relatively long limbs

Again, I was referring to the short term. As in short people = short limbs IRL right now. What you describe is what would eventually come out during evolution. Apples and oranges.

We already have people who have short necks/torsos, some of which are tall and some of which are short. For all we know the heart-to-head distance may be more critical a factor than overall height. I think you're focusing a little too much on an obvious and single trait when in reality evolutionary fitness is almost always multi-factorial. Yes, all other things being equal short people will have some advantage - provided their shortness is not due to some pathological condition - but you can't assume that someone slightly shorter will always be better for the proposed environment than someone slightly taller but with better other traits.

That's always been a problem with human eugenics - focusing solely on just one trait.

[Purple]

People don't "stand up and run" 24/7 - and in this case they'd do a lot more lying around. Probably utilize a lot more automation for stuff, too. Small forklifts for lifting loads will be commonplace, as an example.

No they do stand up and run. But they do stand up to walk around all day, cook meals, go to the bathroom and stuff like that. There are all to many tasks that are required for a human being to just survive through a day that would require a lot of walking around, standing and stuff. That is assuming we are not giving them singularity level robotics, replicators or Star Wars level droid help.

It will take a LOT longer than 500 years to achieve that!

Exactly. And in the short term all we will see is that people who are shorter will get more work done and hence be more popular.

You missed my point that there is already variation among humans as to how efficient the cardiovascular system details work. That's why some people get varicose veins and some don't - varicose veins are a malfunction of the venous blood-return system in the legs. You choose your colonists based on criteria that indicate slightly better traits in the direction you want/need to go. 3-4 generations of selected breeding in an environment that actually does impact lifespan in a significant way can result in significant changes.

I thought this was not about a colony but about introducing people into an artificial high gravity environment for training purposes.

That's always been a problem with human eugenics - focusing solely on just one trait.

By focusing on one trait I do NOT claim that others are non existent. I am just not addressing them at all since I newer got to them. Unlike you who focus on the others and claim the one I am focusing on is.

[Chirios]

Within reason (the aforementioned torque problems), I think it's possible with some sort of Iron Man style suit, yeah.