Astronauts dwelling in remoted, sanitized area habitats for lengthy durations of time may keep more healthy by being uncovered to a higher number of microbes from Earth, in response to a brand new examine.

“Sterile environments should not actually the most secure environments,” examine co-author Rob Knight, a professor on the College of California, San Diego, informed Area.com. “Publicity to useful microbes within the atmosphere is necessary for sustaining well being — this isn’t shocking as a result of, as people, we’ve got coevolved with these environmental microbes for hundreds of thousands of years.”