Magnetic Blood Artificial Gravity.... Safe-ish?

[Spacescifi]

Just curious if it would be possible to magnetize blood by increasing it's iron content?

Thereby allowing a magnet to induce force on it to simulate downward gravity?

 

Now I reckon nowadays doing that would lead to irreparable cancer risk and damage... but with futuristic advanced technology such could be used in theory to mitigate or even fix any damage done.

Main question... I reckon it could work... but one would want to wear electro magnet shoes so they do not get stuck to the floor, or else be forced to turn off the floor magnet.

 

Thoughts?

[cubinator]

Gravity from a planet acts almost uniformly on a human. Magnets act as 1/r^2 unless your magnet is enormous like a planet, and much more powerful. So my guess is sure, you could make a measurable acceleration but the gravity from the pulsar you used to create it would be crushing you.

If you want to use a smaller magnet, the differential force will kill whoever comes near.

[Spacescifi]

8 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Gravity from a planet acts almost uniformly on a human. Magnets act as 1/r^2 unless your magnet is enormous like a planet, and much more powerful. So my guess is sure, you could make a measurable acceleration but the gravity from the pulsar you used to create it would be crushing you.

If you want to use a smaller magnet, the differential force will kill whoever comes near.

 

What you are saying is the acceleration would not be even but rather that it would increase at the toes near the floor and decrease on the way up?

 

And I mean using magnet levels we can actually reasonably achieve.

I mean literally pumping the blood with iron particles, enough that a body can be magnetized.

 

A long time ago as a bored teen I managed to magnetize a bug with iron rust.

So much was on him that it became trapped inside his joints, and therefore his rear end was literally magnetized.

It was kind of fun watching a magnet pull a living creature back as it tried to flee... but I also feel sorry for it.... died for science (repeated slamming into a magnet is lethal).

[Piscator]

Iron particles in the blood would very likely kill you. The iron contained in your blood and the iron that's attracted by a magnet are two rather different things.

[cubinator]

Blood is already slightly magnetic. I have seen a video on Youtube of someone pulling a container of pig's blood gently with a several-kg magnet. 

Free iron put into the blood will instantly clump together due to each particle's individual magnetism, clotting and cutting. A magnetic strip running vertically along your clothing in a way that it doesn't cross over itself would be...well, I would say "safer" but a more relevant term would be "non-lethal". I'm sure with such advanced science the kinematics of such a suit could be made to feel comfortable.  

If you are intent on making blood more iron-rich, the only way I see is to increase production of hemoglobin, the molecule which contains it and is used to carry oxygen. This will probably cause other health concerns long before the problem of clumping becomes relevant, and it is a real medical condition that a few people experience, sometimes in relation to a bone cancer or other disease.

Edited February 7, 2022 by cubinator

[Shpaget]

Interestingly, oxygenated blood has slightly different magnetic properties that deoxygenated, however, neither one is particularly strongly attracted to magnets, which is a good thing, otherwise MRI machines would be instantly lethal to us.

So, to answer your question - No.

[Gargamel]

14 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

 

Just curious if it would be possible to magnetize blood by increasing it's iron content?

 

Speaking with over a decade in emergency medicine, to me this is a simple No.   

Body chemistry is a finely tuned balancing act.   Adding too much of anything causes issues.    See follow up post below
 

Blood vessels are -not- structural.    Applying internal forces to them will tear them to shreds   
 

This is a very very bad idea medically.   
 

Yes, they would be stuck to the floor, but would be also very very dead, with a very nasty case of acute morbid lividity.

 

 

 

 

Edited February 8, 2022 by Gargamel

[Spacescifi]

Just now, Gargamel said:

Speaking with over a decade in emergency medicine, to me this is a simple No.   

Body chemistry is a finely tuned balancing act.   Adding too much of anything causes issues.   
 

Blood vessels are -not- structural.    Applying internal forces to them will tear them to shreds   
 

This is a very very bad idea medically.   
 

Yes, they would be stuck to the floor, but would be also very very dead, with a very nasty case of acute morbid lividity.

 

 

 

 

 

That settles it then! He has spoken!

[kerbiloid]

And be magically attracted to every fridge due to magnets.

[K^2]

13 hours ago, cubinator said:

Gravity from a planet acts almost uniformly on a human. Magnets act as 1/r^2 unless your magnet is enormous like a planet, and much more powerful.

Nah, that's not the problem. MRI machines actually need a very uniform magnetic field to produce images with minimal distortion and they are plenty strong enough. So we literally have magnets that would do just fine.

The problem is that even if you had a way to magnetize blood, there's not that much of it compared to the total weight of the body. Total water content is a lot higher, but if we're talking about blood specifically, you'll have to pull on it with significantly more force than gravity does in order for the net force on the body to add up to a full normal weight. And blood already starts to pool in extremities with just a bit higher gravitational pull. I'm having hard time believing this would be healthy even if you only lye down flat. Trying to stand up would be instant unconsciousness.

There might be some interesting use cases for the concept specifically in countering high accelerations, say, for fighter pilots. When your body is already supported by the chair, and your biggest limit on pulling g-forces is blood going where you don't want, being able to push the blood around with a magnet might let you go to higher accelerations briefly. But for sustained artificial gravity, you still want something more like a centrifuge.

[adsii1970]

7 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

And be magically attracted to every fridge due to magnets.

I'm already attracted to my fridge and it doesn't involve magnets. It's where the cheese and, ahem, bottled goods are!

[Gargamel]

To clarify and supplement my previous statement @Spacescifi (I was at work and somewhat harried when I made the first post, and I feel I should expand on it, my apologies.  ) .... as it stands we don't have the technology to safely introduce things like this in the bloodstream now, but there are efforts to create artificial blood substitutes, and the concept of a magnetized additive isn't that far fetched.  

But.... as mentioned the vascular system wouldn't be able to handle the load.  It's a very light weight system of small tubes, it would tear it self to shreds as it wouldn't be able to transfer the loads to the rest of the body.    Plus, it's porous.   Fluids can seep in and out of the system as needed, but in some illnesses, fluid tends to gather at the feet.    Eventually all your blood would seep out of your blood vessels and into your lower extremities, causing severe pedal edema and possibly compartment syndrome which might require the amputation of said extremities, if you managed to survive the lack of blood flow at all. 

So perhaps instead of a blood additive, some surgical implants in the major bones to harness the magnetic field.   But the issue with this idea is that you only gain the ability to stick to the floor, none of the other health advantages of 1g.   Your heart would be under less stress, more exercise required, etc etc.    But it might have some useful scenarios for this type of setup.

Although.... being this is sci-fi.... there is bound to be some sort of combat.   I have visions of two smaller vessels latching themselves onto opposite sides of a larger vessel, and alternating a massive magnetic field back and forth.     This would be the equivalent of grabbing the larger vessel and shaking it violently until everyone inside is jelly, but without actually shaking it.   Could make for some interesting plot points though, to say the least. 

 

Edited February 8, 2022 by Gargamel

[jimmymcgoochie]

You know how getting electrocuted is bad for you? And how moving magnets can create electrical currents? Now put them together and you have blood that is constantly giving you electric shocks throughout your body- probably inducing massive seizures and cardiac arrest as the magnetic blood disrupted your brain function and heart rhythm.

Just having the blood flowing around your body would be bad enough, but in areas with high flow like the aorta and vena cava (flowing out of and into the heart respectively) there could be enough of a charge difference to make the magnetic stuff clump together, potentially ripping one or both of those massive blood vessels open and resulting in catastrophic internal bleeding and rapid death. Or maybe it’ll happen more in small vessels with thinner walls, so you get death by a thousand cuts but from within the body.

Throw in an external magnetic field and things would only get worse, especially if you happened to move around in said field as humans are prone to do.

Oh, and on top of that, you’ll get heat produced by all this magnetism too which could really mess with your homeostatic mechanisms and even cook you alive if you happened to walk into a strong enough magnetic field.

All in all, it’s a no from me.