A mega yacht that would be the biggest private vessel ever built would stretch the length of more than two football fields and contain its own casino and art galleries, under new plans.

The colossal $800 million 'Valkyrie Project' stretches an impressive 229 metres - the same as 24 buses parked end-to-end.  This would smash the record currently held by the superyacht Azzam which belongs to president of the United Arab Emirates, Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and measures 180 metres.

The floating leviathan could carry an incredible 52 guests and 92 crew members including an entire deck just for the owner and would travel at a comfortable speed of 25 knots.  It would also be equipped with its own casino, theatres, restaurants and even art galleries.  However, rather than an oligarch's play thing, the designer claims he wants the vessel to be used more like a 'floating entertainment hub' which the public could enjoy.

The mammoth project is the brainchild of Chulhun Park who spent eight months working with yacht designers Palmer Johnson as part of his university course.

Mr Park, 36, from Seoul, South Korea, said the vessel would be made from aluminium and a specially made carbon-fibre structure.  He said: 'Valkyrie project was my thesis project supported by Palmer Johnson at Royal College of Art in London.  It took eight months to design her.  'I tried to manipulate the structure's surface skin and create non-rectilinear shapes which appear to distort and dislocate elements of shape.  When I decided to be a yacht designer, I realized that most yachts are white coloured and stacked up like wedding cakes.  Therefore, I determined to design a very unique looking yacht which would stand out of the fleet.  My main goal of designing Valkyrie project was to build a floating entertainment hub, a 229m-long yacht which the public could come onto and enjoy the benefits.  Most people consider superyachts to be an exclusive property for billionaires to show off their wealth.  However, what if we create floating architecture to be used by everyone.  I put a huge amount of open space on the yacht, including a casino, theatre, ocean mall, restaurants and exhibition halls, all to satisfy visitors' needs and create a profit.  To create Valkyrie, it would cost around $800 million.  I have had a few interesting offers, but no contracts have been signed yet.  If she is eventually built, she would be the longest superyacht ever made.'

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Australian scientists are working on a revolutionary new wetsuit to protect people from fatal shark attacks.

Experts at Flinders University, Adelaide, are busy developing a prototype made from strong synthetic fibers, similar to those found in bullet-proof vests.  Although it couldn't withstand the force of the predator's jaw, it may help limit tissue damage and reduce blood-loss, which often causes death.

The ambitious project has been supported with a $90,000 government grant.

Charlie Huveneers, associate professor at Flinders University, told 9News :'The majority of fatalities from shark bites is due to blood loss, or the shock from blood loss.  We want new technologies, a new way of doing business when it comes to interacting with sharks.  If we can reduce that blood loss from minimising injury, and with rapid emergency responses, we can hopefully increase the survival rate of people being bitten by sharks.'

Testing of the material is due to start later this year in a common shark hotspot off the Spencer Gulf, west of Adelaide.

A Great White Shark exerts roughly 4,000 pounds of force through its jaws via 50 razor-sharp teeth, making a suit fit to withstand this is an engineering feat.

Despite tens of millions of trips to the beach taken in Australia every year, shark attacks are extremely rare, but each incident sets off public debate about beach safety.  There were 27 shark attacks in Australian waters last year, according to data compiled by Sydney's Taronga Zoo, including one fatal incident in popular tourist destination Whitsunday Islands, near the Great Barrier Reef.  Many experts point to the increased number of people going into the water as a reason for any increase in attacks.

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Our planet's magnetic field is believed to be generated deep down in the Earth's core.  Nobody has ever journeyed to the centre of the Earth, but by studying shockwaves from earthquakes, physicists have been able to work out its likely structure.

At the heart of the Earth is a solid inner core, two thirds of the size of the moon, made mainly of iron.  At 5,700°C, this iron is as hot as the Sun's surface, but the crushing pressure caused by gravity prevents it from becoming liquid.

Surrounding this is the outer core there is a 2,000 km thick layer of iron, nickel, and small quantities of other metals.  The metal here is fluid, because of the lower pressure than the inner core.

Differences in temperature, pressure and composition in the outer core cause convection currents in the molten metal as cool, dense matter sinks and warm matter rises.

The 'Coriolis' force, caused by the Earth's spin, also causes swirling whirlpools.  This flow of liquid iron generates electric currents, which in turn create magnetic fields.

Charged metals passing through these fields go on to create electric currents of their own, and so the cycle continues.  This self-sustaining loop is known as the geodynamo.

The spiralling caused by the Coriolis force means the separate magnetic fields are roughly aligned in the same direction, their combined effect adding up to produce one vast magnetic field engulfing the planet.

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Earth narrowly avoided a catastrophic collapse of the magnetic field that protects our planet 565 million years ago, it has been revealed.

Researchers say that if it had collapsed, life on Earth would have faced severe challenges as the solar wind would have stripped the planet of its atmosphere and bombarded the surface with harmful radiation.

Researchers found that, luckily, our planet's core solidified 'right in the nick of time', recharging Earth's magnetic field when it was at its weakest point.

The discovery provides a new insight into the formation of Earth's core, and backs the theory the Earth's core is relatively young.

Scientists led by Richard Bono, a palaeomagnetism researcher at the University of Rochester, studied single crystals of plagioclase and clinopyroxene formed 565 million years ago in what is now Canada's eastern Quebec.  This data allowed them to reconstruct this timeline of Earth's inner core 'nucleation,' or solidification for the paper published online recently in Nature Geoscience.

They found unprecedentedly low geomagnetic field intensities, revealing there was a high frequency of magnetic reversals at that time, suggesting that the geodynamo was on the point of collapsing.

'An enduring mystery about Earth has been the age of its solid inner core,' the researchers wrote.  Estimates of when the inner core solidified vary widely, ranging between 2.5 billion and 500 million years ago.

In an accompanying News & Views article, Peter Driscoll writes that 'the nucleation of the inner core may have occurred right in the nick of time to recharge the geodynamo and save Earth's magnetic shield.'

Driscoll said scientists had previously interpreted the weak magnetic field 565 million years ago as being the result of 'rapid tectonic motion, hyper-frequent polarity reversals, and even an equatorial dipole.  'A young inner core is consistent with thermal history models of the Earth9–12 that predict a large transfer of heat from the core to the mantle due, indirectly, to upward revisions to the thermal conductivity of the core,' he wrote.

The new study could also improve the search for alien life, giving astronomers a new glimpse into how planets that can sustain life form.

Earth is made up of several different layers, each with unique properties:

At the deepest level is the inner core which is believed to be solid.  This produces Earth's magnetic field and protects us from cosmic radiation.

The next layer is Earth's liquid core which is a fluid layer about 2,200 km thick and composed of mostly iron and nickel.

The mantle is the largest region of subterranean Earth and makes up around 84 per cent of the planet's volume.  It sits between the crust and the outer core and is broken down into two sections - upper and lower.

The asthenosphere is a part of the upper mantle that sits below the lithosphere and is believed to be involved in plate tectonic movement.

The lithosphere is the region of the planet that is known as the crust and some parts of the uppermost mantle. It features everything we think of as the ground.  It is made up predominantly of silica and is broken up into the tectonic plates.

The Lithosphere-Asthenosphere boundary (LAB) is defined by a difference in response to stress.  The plates and the lithosphere often remain rigid but the weaker and more viscous asthenosphere can move and is known to move.  This movement causes plates to move into, underneath and below others and  the LAB is the fundamental cause behind tsunamis and earthquakes as well as mountain range formation.

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Not having time to go to the gym is no longer an excuse not to exercise, research suggests.

A study of 10 overweight men found those who took part in high intensity interval training (HIIT) for only 15 minutes three times a week saw their insulin sensitivity improve just as much those doing the same work out for 45 minutes.  Insulin sensitivity is a marker of type 2 diabetes, with the results suggesting short bursts of rigorous activity may ward off the disease.

The research was carried out by the University of Edinburgh and led by Dr Stuart Gray, a lecturer in exercise and metabolic health.

Obesity is on the rise, with 26 per cent of adults in the UK being classified with the eating disorder in 2016, compared to just 15 per cent in 1993, NHS Digital statistics show.  And more than two in three adults in the US are overweight or obese, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Some 3.2million people in the UK have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, while the condition affects 30.3million in the US.  In both countries, 90 per cent of patients have type 2, which is strongly associated with carrying too much weight.

To determine the effects of HIIT on insulin sensitivity, the researchers analysed overweight men, some of whom were put on a rigorous 15 minute exercise routine.

Each training session involved a set of nine resistance exercises - such as leg presses and bicep curls.  The men repeated these exercises - within the 15 minutes - until they felt unable to do anymore.  The remaining men completed the same workout for three 45 minute sessions every seven days.

After six weeks, results - published in the journal Experimental Physiology - suggested a 15 minute workout is just as effective as exercising for three quarters of an hour.  Men in both groups saw a 16 per cent improvement to their insulin sensitivity.  This measures how a person responds to the hormone insulin, which is responsible for the uptake of glucose from our blood to be used as energy or stored in tissues.

Type 2 diabetes occurs when insulin sensitivity decreases, which causes blood sugar levels to rise.  Untreated, this raises a person's risk of heart disease and stroke.

All of the participants also saw their muscles become stronger and bigger after just two weeks.  But the study was lacking a control group and only included healthy - albeit overweight - men.  Additional trials made up of men of a range of sizes and health statuses should therefore be carried out, the researchers said.

Dr Gray said: 'On top of these results, we know that the gym is not for everyone.  Therefore, we also need to see if we can get people doing similar exercises at home without gym equipment, to achieve similarly beneficial effects.'

If these trials are positive, the scientists hope further studies will demonstrate the effectiveness of HIIT in improving type 2 diabetes.

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Israeli scientists claim they will develop a cure for cancer within the next year - an unlikely prospect, according to world leaders in cancer care and treatment innovation.

In December, Nobel Prize winner James Allison, who helped develop immunotherapy, said: 'Soon we'll get close with some cancers,' citing progress against some forms including melanoma. But, 'the world will never be cancer-free.'

Today, Accelerated Evolution Biotechnologies Ltd in Israel claims to have proved him wrong, using a web of small protein fragments called peptides which can wrap around cancer cells like an octopus, attacking tumors from multiple angles and reaching areas that other treatment molecules are too big to get to.  They say the peptides are so delicate that they should fly under the immune system's radar, preventing counter attacks from the tumor and side effects like nausea and 'chemo brain'.

Critics say the method is promising and not unheard-of but claims of a 'cure' are wildly overstated, since the only study was performed in mice, nobody has seen the results of that study, and even the inventors admit human trials will take years to start and complete.  What's more, it's improbable that we will ever develop one singular cure for all cancers, which vary widely.

Len Lichtenfeld, MD, chief medical officer of the ACS, told DailyMail.com in an email, and since published on his blog: 'It goes without saying, we all share the aspirational hope that they are correct.  Unfortunately, we must be aware that this is far from proven as an effective treatment for people with cancer, let alone a cure.'

The researchers have not published data to back up their claim that this is the most promising treatment to date.  The only words published on their 'exploratory experiment in mice' is an interview they gave to local paper The Jerusalem Post, claiming success.

That is not enough to warrant excitement or even intrigue, says Dr Vince Luca, assistant professor of Cancer Biology at Moffitt Cancer Center.

'Peptides are a rapidly growing class of therapeutics, yet very few peptide-based drugs have received FDA approval for oncology indications.  The Israeli scientists’ reports of a “universal cancer cure” have not been substantiated through publications in peer-reviewed articles, nor have they been demonstrated in human clinical trials, and their claims should be met with extreme skepticism,' Dr Luca told DailyMail.com.

That's not to say it couldn't work as a treatment in some capacity.  But Dr Lichtenfeld warns there is a big difference between finding a treatment with potential and making it work.

Dr Lichtenfeld said: 'Our hopes are always on the side of new breakthroughs in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.  We are living in an era where many exciting advances are impacting the care of patients with cancer. We hope that this approach also bears fruit and is successful.  At the same time, we must always offer a note of caution that the process to get this treatment from mouse to man is not always a simple and uncomplicated journey.  As experience has taught us so many times, the gap from a successful mouse experiment to effective, beneficial application of exciting laboratory concepts to helping cancer patients at the bedside is in fact a long and treacherous journey, filled with unforeseen and unanticipated obstacles.'

PEPTIDES ARE PROMISING FOR CANCER CARE - BUT SCIENTISTS ARE STILL STRUGGLING TO MAKE THEM WORK THIS WAY

Even despite the huge gains made in cancer treatment innovation, we are still far off eliminating the disease, with more than 18 million new cases a year and 8.2 million deaths.

Immunotherapy is the new wonder treatment, winning the Nobel Prize last year, as it trains the patient's immune system to fight cancer itself, getting around the issues of the patient's immune system reacting to drugs.

But that is expensive, still being rolled out into mainstream care, and even the inventors, James Allison of the US and Tasuku Honjo of Japan, would not market it as a cure.

Aside from that, there have been steps to more directly deliver drugs like chemotherapy to the tumor to prevent arduous and sometimes excruciating side effects.

Currently, the top FDA-approved method to do that is with antibodies, which have been perfect vehicles for delivering targeted drugs.  However, the antibody molecules are often too big to reach the brain for brain tumors.  And antibodies have a tendency to bind to parts of the immune system that can have toxic effects on the liver and bone marrow.

Peptides, amino acids connected in a chain, have been held up as a perfect alternative.  They are cheap to make and regulate, are less likely to cause side effects, and they can effectively home in on specific sites without affecting surrounding areas.

Three peptides are already used to treat elements of cancer - mainly targeting hormones that feed tumors, while other drugs do the tumor-killing.  However, many see the potential in peptides to one day do everything in a multi-pronged attack - and that is what the Israeli team claim to have achieved.

The big problem with peptides, according to a study published last year, is that they are often too delicate to be a match for tumors, and they have short half-lives, meaning they don't have the stamina to deliver a sustained attack on tumors.  Attempts have been made to extend their half life and strengthen them, but thus far to no avail.

'My colleagues here at ACS tell me phage or peptide display techniques, while very powerful research tools for selecting high affinity binders, have had a difficult road as potential drugs.  If [the Israeli group] is just beginning clinical trials, they have some tough experiments ahead,' Dr Lichtenfeld said.

WHAT IS DIFFERENT ABOUT THE ISRAELI TEAM'S ATTEMPTS - AND WHAT ARE THE CAVEATS?

Accelerated Evolution Biotechnologies Ltd (AEBi) has not conducted any human clinical trials, and has only completed one study on mice, according to their profile in the Jerusalem Post.  That is far from what is needed to establish a worthy treatment, let alone a cure.  As a result, most cancer experts will dismiss the study as, at best, a work in progress.

Claims of a cure are, at best, an overstretch.   However, the methods do build on research into peptides for cancer care, and deliver some fresh ideas on how they could be made stronger.

CEO Dr Ilan Morad compared the method, which he calls MuTaTo (multi-target toxin), to the drug cocktails used to target the AIDS virus from multiple angles at the same time.  He says the delicate chain of just 12 amino acids at a time would consist of 'several cancer-targeting peptides for each cancer cell at the same time' and would contain 'a strong peptide toxin that would kill cancer cells specifically.'

'The probability of having multiple mutations that would modify all targeted receptors simultaneously decreases dramatically with the number of targets used.  Instead of attacking receptors one at a time, we attack receptors three at a time – not even cancer can mutate three receptors at the same time,' Morad said.

COULD THIS TREATMENT EVEN REACH CLINICS WITHIN A YEAR?

There are many elements to complete, that are a tall order for a 12-month schedule:

First, AEBi says it is trying to patent specific peptide structures.

Second, they are aiming to conduct human trials which, they say, will take a few years.  Thus far, they have conducted petri dish tests and their 'first exploratory mice experiment'.

Third, the aim is for the treatment to be personalized, taking biopsies from the patients to work out which receptors need targeting.  That will take time to craft.

Dan Aridor, chairman of the board of AEBi, insisted their results are 'consistent and repeatable', adding: 'We believe we will offer in a year's time a complete cure for cancer.  Our cancer cure will be effective from day one, will last a duration of a few weeks and will have no or minimal side-effects at a much lower cost than most other treatments on the market.'

But Dr Lichtenfield warned readers should take the claims with a sizeable pinch of salt.  It is hardly the first time a team has said the same.  He recommends a 'well-established program of experiments' to 'better define how this works - and may not work - as it moves from the laboratory bench to the clinic.'

'It will likely take some time to prove the benefit of this new approach to the treatment of cancer,' he explains. 'And unfortunately - based on other similar claims of breakthrough technologies for the treatment of cancer - the odds are that it won’t be successful.'

WE PROBABLY WON'T EVER DEVELOP ONE SINGLE CANCER CURE 

More importantly, it is unlikely cancer will ever be cured with one silver bullet given the myriad of different types of tumors, locations and diseases.

'There's lot of things we can't control,' Dr Shelley S Tworoger, associate director of the Population Science division at Moffitt Cancer Center, explained to DailyMail.com in an interview last month.

Many types of cancer could be prevented with lifestyle changes, Dr Tworoger said, such as 'stopping smoking, improving diet, more physical activity, better weight control, and HPV vaccines.'

That could allow us to push the preventable types 'off the table' and focus resources on other types.  One day we may be able to better control cancer, and perhaps reach a point where they become similar to a chronic disease, like HIV.  But one pill to nip them all in the bud like antibiotics - as this Israeli team envision - is improbable.

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A species of ancient, flat shark that survive on sea beds has been spotted off the Welsh coast.  Sightings around Cardigan Bay, the Bristol Channel and to the north of Holyhead have encouraged scientists that the elusive and critically endangered angel sharks are thriving once more.  Numbers of the unique animal plummeted in the 20th century thanks to commercial fishing and pollution.

Angel sharks are believed to stem from an ancient lineage of sharks that have changed very little over its evolutionary history.  Spain's Canary Islands, just west of Africa has emerged as the long stronghold for the animal after its demise in the latter half of the 1900s.  Sightings from fishermen off the coast of Wales has provided new hope for the conservation hopes of these rare sharks.

It poses little threat to humans, despite the shark's fearsome appearance and stealthy approach to hunting, as they survive on smaller prey such as crabs and fish.

'If we lose the angel shark, we lose a really important lineage of evolutionary history that we can't get from any other shark species,' Joanna Barker, of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), told BBC News.

Numbers of angel sharks plummeted after they became a prize catch for fishermen.  Researchers are now hoping to understand if Wales is a second endemic location or if it is part of a migration for the sharks.  It lies in wait at the bottom of the ocean and waits for small fish or crab strays to wander in its vicinity.

'What we really want to try and understand is what sort of numbers are we talking about and where are their important habitats.  There could be some really critical areas for angel sharks in Wales ,' Joanna said.

Scientists hope that genetic swabs from the sharks could reveal if the sharks seen in the Canary Islands and those believed to be In Wales are the same animals or distinct populations.  Dives has been already scheduled to take place to find direct evidence of the presence of Angel sharks.

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There are an estimated 170 million pieces of so-called 'space junk' - left behind after missions that can be as big as spent rocket stages or as small as paint flakes - in orbit alongside some US$700 billion of space infrastructure.  But only 22,000 are tracked, and with the fragments able to travel at speeds above 27,000 kmh, even tiny pieces could seriously damage or destroy satellites.

However, traditional gripping methods don't work in space, as suction cups do not function in a vacuum and temperatures are too cold for substances like tape and glue.  Grippers based around magnets are useless because most of the debris in orbit around Earth is not magnetic.

Most proposed solutions, including debris harpoons, either require or cause forceful interaction with the debris, which could push those objects in unintended, unpredictable directions.

Scientists point to two events that have badly worsened the problem of space junk.  The first was in February 2009, when an Iridium telecoms satellite and Kosmos-2251, a Russian military satellite, accidentally collided.  The second was in January 2007, when China tested an anti-satellite weapon on an old Fengyun weather satellite.

Experts also pointed to two sites that have become worryingly cluttered.  One is low Earth orbit which is used by satnav satellites, the ISS, China's manned missions and the Hubble telescope, among others.  The other is in geostationary orbit, and is used by communications, weather and surveillance satellites that must maintain a fixed position relative to Earth.

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NASA has released the clearest image yet of the 'space snowman' Ultima Thule, the most distant known world in our solar system at six billion km away from Earth.

The new image was acquired when the New Horizons spacecraft was just 6,700 km away from the target and shows sharper detail of the rock's surface including what appears to be a dent on the left object.

Because of its distance from Earth, it takes six hours and nine minutes for the data, which was transmitted between January 18th and 19th, to start reaching us.  Since then, experts have been using software to sharpen it.

The picture was obtained using New Horizons' wide-angle Multicolor Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) which gives a resolution of 5000 x 32 pixels seven minutes before the spacecraft's closest approach to the snowman.  Ultima Thule's detail is now sharpened for us to see the outline of a number of pits, including a deep depression in the left object.

The NASA craft first captured images of the dual-lobed space rock, located more than a billion miles from Pluto, when it reached it on New Year's day.  It continues to perform several flyby's of the 33 km long asteroid and beam data back to Earth for the next 20 months to shed light on how the solar system was created. 

Ultima Thule, formally known as 2014 MU69, got its name from a medieval term for anywhere beyond the known world.

The project has spent more than a decade hurtling through the Solar System since it launched on January 19, 2006 and passed Pluto in 2015.

'Ultima Thule will be the most primitive planetary object explored, and will reveal what conditions were like in this distant part of the solar system as it formed from the solar nebula,' Nasa said.

The probe is powered by a plutonium core and when it reached Pluto its sensors were working fine so NASA sent the probe on towards Ultima Thule.

Due to its original formation in the dust that also birthed Earth, scientists hope to find clues about how our planet came to be.

Evidence from the probe led NASA scientists to believe they have found new evidence of the mysterious 'wall' that surrounds all the planets and objects in our solar system.

This mysterious bubble marks the boundary between the solar system and interstellar space and provides a marker for the edge of the sun's influence.  According to the latest findings, the barrier is actually a vast amount of trapped hydrogen atoms caught up in the solar wind of our star.  These produce waves of ultraviolet light in a very distinctive way, which have been detected by the sensors aboard the New Horizons interplanetary space probe.

Ultima Thule orbits the Sun in a sparsely populated and low-energy environment known as the Kuiper belt, a circumstellar disc in the outer Solar System, extending from the orbit of Neptune.  Because it is so sparsely populated, the chance of a collision with other objects is exceedingly low, but experts say that as it was probably created at the start of the solar system, it would have faced collision with other rocks.

Horizons' principal investigator Prof Alan Stern said: 'Everything that we're going to learn about Ultima - from its composition to its geology, to how it was originally assembled, whether it has satellites and an atmosphere, and that kind of thing - is going to teach us about the original formation conditions in the Solar System that all the other objects we've gone out and orbited, flown by and landed on can't tell us because they're either large and evolve, or they are warm.  Ultima is unique.'

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A new study supported by NASA has shed worrying light on the effects of space travel on the human brain.  Brain scans of astronauts from before and after spaceflight revealed changes typically associated with long term processes such as aging, including deterioration in areas responsible for movement and the processing of sensory information.  The results, however, also suggest an astronaut’s brain may be able to adapt to these changes over time.

Rachel Seidler, a professor with the College of Health and Human Performance at the University of Florida said: ‘We know that fluid shifts toward the head in space.  When you see photos and video of astronauts, their faces often look puffy, because gravity isn’t pulling fluids down into the body.’

These gravitational effects aren’t just worn on the surface – according to the new study, spaceflight directly affects the brain’s white matter in the regions that control movement and process sensory information.  And, the team found that spaceflight causes fluid around the brain to pool at the base of the cerebrum, as if the brain is ‘floating higher’ in the skull.  This could play a key role in a condition called Spaceflight Associated Neuro-Ocular Syndrome, which causes visual changes and flattening in the back of the eye.

Seidler said: ‘It could be slower fluid turnover, it could be pressure on the optic nerve or that the brain is sort of tugging on the optic nerve because it’s floating higher in the skull.’

But, the researchers say, the white matter problems don’t appear to be permanent.  Typically, these changes fix themselves in a matter of weeks after the astronauts return to Earth.  Some changes, however, could last months.  Moving forward, the team plans to include scans from six months after spaceflight as well.

The findings aren’t just important for astronauts, but for future space tourists as well, especially as inactive lifestyles continue to be common.

Upon returning to Earth, an astronaut’s body isn’t sending as much sensory input to the brain, the researchers note.

Seidler notes: ‘We have an increasingly sedentary lifestyle.  It’s not the same as the effects on limbs in space, but if we’re laying around and not using our bodies, could the integrity of white matter pathways in the brain be affected?  Another reason is for an active lifestyle.’

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