The illustration above should give you some sense of how I spent my summer: Learning everything I possibly could about the current state of hibernation research, the unheralded key to getting our species to Mars and beyond. I did so in order to write this new Wired story, which came out on Thanksgiving morning. The piece’s narrative throughline is about an Alaskan researcher who’s dedicated the bulk of her adult life to trying to understand how Arctic ground squirrels power down for two-thirds of every year. But I also make a stab at grappling with how humans might use and misuse the power to turn ourselves off and on at will:
As for myself, what I find most alluring about hibernation is its potential to offer a brief holiday from the constant din of my own thoughts. In a time of exhausting overstimulation, anxiety, and dread, I find myself wondering what it would be like to switch off for a week or two. In his novelization of 2001, Arthur C. Clarke depicted one of his main characters as longing for the psychological liberation of torpor: “Sometimes Bowman, as First Captain of Discovery, envied his three unconscious colleagues in the frozen peace of the Hibernaculum. They were free from all boredom and responsibility.”
If you’re keen to read more about how NASA’s planning to incorporate hibernation tech into Mars missions, I urge you to check out SpaceWorks’ in-depth report on the topic.
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