Settling a colony on the Moon or Mars or even traveling out of the solar system has been popular grist for science fiction novels. However there are currently very real reasons that may not make this fantasy a possibility any time in the near future. The most important one being how one grows older in space.

Without the conditions that support normal life on Earth, the long distance travel to another celestial body is likely to accelerate the aging of the human immune system. Scientific researchers at the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, found that mice in low gravity conditions experience changes in B lymphocyte production in their bone marrow similar to those observed in elderly mice living in Earth conditions.

This basically means that altered gravity can make you age much faster than was imagined earlier. Naturally there will have to be some drastic improvements in medical care in order to ensure that the set of people out to colonize a new world don’t die on the journey out to the new colony.

It is clear that between the frailty of the human body in outer space and the lack of technology to get us to our closest neighbors is going to be a major detriment to colonizing any planet other than ours at present. This is one science project that is going to take more time to take off.