Can humans hibernate their way to Mars?

In today’s Big Story podcast, one of the biggest barriers to human space exploration is our own metabolism. Carrying the supplies necessary to sustain even a small crew on a years-long mission to Mars is simply not feasible. But what if we could shut ourselves down, the way animals do in the middle of winter, to limit our need for sustenance?

Brendan Koerner is a contributing editor at WIRED and the author of The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking. He joins us to discuss the current state of human hibernation research, and its potential applications beyond space travel.

“If you can just zip in and out of reality for weeks or months at a time, it’s kind of the only attainable form of time travel, and I think people will be very curious to try it,” he said.

So how far has the science progressed in recent years? And if we are able to induce long term hibernation in people, what implications might that have for the future of humanity?

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