Proving that you don’t have to be big to be tough, some microbes can survive gravity more than 400,000 times that felt on Earth, a new study says.
Most humans, by contrast, can tolerate forces equal to about three to five times Earth’s surface gravity (g) before losing consciousness.
The extreme “hypergravity” of 400,000 g is usually found only in cosmic environments, such as on very massive stars or in the shock waves of supernovas, said study leader Shigeru Deguchi, a biologist at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology.
(Related: “Einstein’s Gravity Confirmed on a Cosmic Scale.”)
Deguchi and his team were able to replicate hypergravity on Earth using a machine called an ultracentrifuge.
The scientists rapidly spun four species of bacteria – including the common human gut microbe Escherichia coli – to create increasingly intense gravity conditions.
The bacteria clumped together into pellets as the gravity increased, but their forced closeness didn’t seem to deter growth: All four species multiplied normally under thousands to tens of thousands of times Earth’s gravity.
Two of the species – E. coli and Paracoccus denitrificans, a common soil bacteria – grew under the strain of 403,627 g.
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