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PiSigma said:

Clearly the sperm is already super powered to fertilise the egg. And some extra radiation to develop those super powers.

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Yep! Possible! Possible!

Equation said:

Question is will cell development of a human cell be the same as on Earth? Will the embryo bone be dense enough to handle Earth gravity?

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The answer would be No to both questions...

How different? no one knows... A quick search on PubMed found some articles on such topic. It's very confusing, to say the least. One study used mice oocytes and spermatozoa to perform in vitro fertilization under microgravity and monitored development. Note that they only did fertilization and preimplantation under microgravity. They then put the embryo back to recipient females and let them keep developing under 1G.

Main findings:
- Fertilization was normal under microgravity
- Birth rate was lower (even when most of the development occurred under 1G)
- Cells grew slower under microgravity

vesicles said:

Yep! Possible! Possible!



The answer would be No to both questions...

How different? no one knows... A quick search on PubMed found some articles on such topic. It's very confusing, to say the least. One study used mice oocytes and spermatozoa to perform in vitro fertilization under microgravity and monitored development. Note that they only did fertilization and preimplantation under microgravity. They then put the embryo back to recipient females and let them keep developing under 1G.

Main findings:
- Fertilization was normal under microgravity
- Birth rate was lower (even when most of the development occurred under 1G)
- Cells grew slower under microgravity

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And then there's the question of what extra solar and cosmic radiation astronaunts absorb in space would do to the forming fetus and then to the baby.

"Look mom, I glow in the dark!"

Equation said:

Question is will cell development of a human cell be the same as on Earth? Will the embryo bone be dense enough to handle Earth gravity?

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I suppose the liquid environment in the womb has much, but not 100%, similarity to a micro gravity environment.

I think the problem really starts when the baby is born into a space environment. We know that bone strengthening works in direct relation to the stress created on the bone structure working against gravity but how would the baby's bone structure develop and grow in zero gravity?

Blackstone said:

And then there's the question of what extra solar and cosmic radiation astronaunts absorb in space would do to the forming fetus and then to the baby.

"Look mom, I glow in the dark!"

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That's how the kid might get weird mutations. radiation Won't necessarily make you glow. It induces mutations. Of course, one possible mutation might be glowing in the dark. Just add a fluorescent tag to one of the proteins. We do that on a daily basis.

Quickie said:

I suppose the liquid environment in the womb has much, but not 100%, similarity to a micro gravity environment.

I think the problem really starts when the baby is born into a space environment. We know that bone strengthening works in direct relation to the stress created on the bone structure working against gravity but how would the baby's bone structure develop and grow in zero gravity?

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Why would you think the liquid environment in the womb would be different from the outside? If the woman is on earth under 1G, her womb will be 1G as well. Although the belly of a pregnant woman looks huge, her womb is not a mile-deep lake, where different depth gives you different G.

vesicles said:

Why would you think the liquid environment in the womb would be different from the outside? If the woman is on earth under 1G, her womb will be 1G as well. Although the belly of a pregnant woman looks huge, her womb is not a mile-deep lake, where different depth gives you different G.

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I was referring to the baby "floating" in the liquid of the womb, like an astronaut would be floating in a water tank to simulate zero G.

I was not saying its effect was exactly the same as in zero g. In the womb/water tank, the baby/astronauts would experience zero mechanical stress on their muscle, tissues and bones as they would floating in zero gravity. Of course the reason for their "weightlessness" is not zero G but the buoyancy of the liquid environment and the liquid within/around the human tissues themselves.

Quickie said:

I was referring to the baby "floating" in the liquid of the womb, like an astronaut would be floating in a water tank to simulate zero G.

I was not saying its effect was exactly the same as in zero g. In the womb/water tank, the baby/astronauts would experience zero mechanical stress on their muscle, tissues and bones as they would floating in zero gravity. Of course the reason for their "weightlessness" is not zero G but the buoyancy of the liquid environment and the liquid within/around the human tissues themselves.

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Baby "floating" in the womb is actually much more like you sitting in a bathtub that is half-filled. there is not enough liquid to have any effect on G...

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Blackstone said:

Humm, when I first saw the headline, I had a different mental picture than what was in the article.

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Thats scientists taking the fun out of things.......again.

vesicles said:

Baby "floating" in the womb is actually much more like you sitting in a bathtub that is half-filled. there is not enough liquid to have any effect on G...

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It also depends on the stages of pregnancies. The embryonic or earlier stages is obviously very different from the late stages.

Quickie said:

It also depends on the stages of pregnancies. The embryonic or earlier stages is obviously very different from the late stages.

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Well, overall, the amount of liquid in a womb is simply not enough to sustain multiple G's. It doesn't matter how big/small a particle is embedded in it. A bacterium experiences the same G as an elephant. It is about the amount of liquid in a container. Simple as that.

If you want to play with semantic, you will experience different G's when you run vs walk. You will also experience different G's in an elevator when going up vs down. But all in all, the overall environment on earth is 1 G.

vesicles said:

...It doesn't matter how big/small a particle is embedded in it. A bacterium experiences the same G as an elephant....

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That is Physics 101. Even in Earth's low orbit, a spacecraft and everything in it, including a baby in a pregnant astronaut, will still be under the influence of the Earth's gravitational field of a strength of only slightly less than the 1G on Earth's surface, all while they're in weightlessness.