ZME SCIENCE - For humans, a fruit fly weighs almost nothing. Yet when scientists made that tiny body feel four, seven, ten, and even thirteen times heavier than normal, it survived every time. At 13G, humans can only survive for a few minutes.
In a new study, researchers at the University of California, Riverside, spun fruit flies in a centrifuge to see what happens when gravity becomes a force the body must fight. The answer was stranger than expected. The flies staggered, slowed, sped up, changed their energy use, recovered over time and, under some conditions, carried on for ten generations living and breeding in hypergravity.