Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast The Physics of Superheroes, the Sequel About this episode Holy Δx Δp ≥ ℏ/2 Batman! Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku joins us for another discussion of superheroes and the amazing physics behind their incredible powers.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
0:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is StarTalk. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and I work at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where I also serve as director of their Hayden Planetarium. My comedic co-host today is Chuck Nice. Chuck. Well, as you may know, in a previous show, we spoke with Professor James Cacalios of the University of Minnesota. And you might ask why? Yeah. He's a professor of physics, and he authored the book, "The Physics of Superheroes." Yeah. And we had enough material there, we made it into two shows, this being the second of those two. Awesome. And that first show was immensely popular. I'm sure. And we're gonna try to do that again. And, you know, it turns out that superheroes, if you think about them through the lens
0:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? of a physicist, you can learn a lot of science by looking at what laws they obey and what laws they violate. I'm sure they violate a lot more than they obey. That's for sure.
1:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know, there's like how strong they are, how fast they move, how well they deflect bullets. Yeah. And so, all of this is about physics. Laser vision? Laser vision. And so, I wanted to like bring in some help on this one. And so, who other to bring in for this than my friend and colleague, Professor Michio Kaku? Michio, welcome to StarTalk Radio.
1:34 Michio Kaku? Glad to be on, Neil.
1:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is actually not your first time on the show. We had you once to comment on the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. So, thanks for doing that for us.
1:44 Michio Kaku? Glad to be on.
1:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That many months ago. So, I've got you on here, not just because you're any old ordinary physicist, but of course, you've written about the relationship of physics to culture and life. In fact, your recent book, "The Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100." And I just realized that that date is far enough in the future that no one alive today will be alive then. So, you can say whatever you wanted in that book.
2:07 Michio Kaku? I don't know about that. Some people think that some people alive today will see the year 2100.
2:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, is that a chapter in the book? How to test if this book is correct?
2:20 Michio Kaku? Simply don't die.
2:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, don't die for a hundred years.
2:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Don't, don't die. So I just thought if that book said, you know, in the year 2030, maybe we could hold you to that. But, all right, we'll give you a pass on that. So, in this section of my conversation with James Kukaleos, who I, who I'd met up with in Los Angeles, we were both at an educators conference, coincidentally, and he, he wrote a book on the amazing story of quantum mechanics, and that got him thinking about whether any superheroes tapped the quantum universe. And so, Michio, every physicist knows quantum, but you live the stuff, right? And so, what is the freakiest thing about quantum you would tell, top three freakiest things you would share with the public?
3:02 Michio Kaku? Well, first of all, that's my day job. I do quantum physics for a living. That's what I get paid to do by the city of New York. But if you think about the superpowers of the X-Men, almost all of them-
3:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, wait, just a second. It's not that the city has, has quantum physicists, you know, arming the borders.
3:19 Speaker 02 I was about to say, you know, I didn't even realize that we needed a quantum physicist on staff here in New York City.
3:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He's professor of physics at the City University of New York, on City College campus. Okay, there we go.
3:30 Speaker 02 I just thought it was the Bloomberg administration. Hey, you know what we need? We need a physicist.
3:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Some quantum folk. I interrupted, Michio, go on.
3:38 Michio Kaku? Well, if you could control the laws of the quantum, then you could in fact have most of the superpowers of the X-Men, most of the superpowers of science fiction. Teleportation, for example, is something we already do at the atomic level. Beam me up, Scotty, right?
3:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He says we, like, it's everybody's house. We have a teleporter.
3:58 Michio Kaku? Teleporter, right. And invisibility. We physicists are using the quantum theory to create objects that are invisible. The Pentagon, of course, is not stupid. They're giving us millions of dollars to perfect this art. And the human torch, it might be possible if you have nanotechnology. Graphene could give you the power of Superman, that is indestructible material.
4:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Graphene is that new, that new flat carbon-
4:23 Michio Kaku? It is the strongest substance known to physics. You could take an elephant-
4:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not known to man, but known to physics.
4:30 Michio Kaku? Forget about man, right? Put an elephant on a pencil, and put the pencil on graphene, and graphene will not rip. It is the strongest material known to science. It's what Superman's cape is made of.
4:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or should be, if they didn't think so at the time. Well, the pencil shatter is the question if the elephant is standing on it.
4:49 Michio Kaku? Also, X-ray vision. We already have what is called backscattered X-rays that could give you the X-ray vision of Superman, almost identical to the power seen in the comic books.
4:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, let's see what James Cukollio says about his favorite quantum superhero.
5:05 Speaker 03 Quantum mechanics is the branch of physics that deals with the properties of atoms and how they interact with light.
5:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So the science of the small.
5:11 Speaker 03 Very small, that's right. There are some superheroes that basically have quantum mechanical properties.
5:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Like who? Give me an example.
5:18 Speaker 03 Well, Dr. Manhattan in the comic book and movie Watchmen.
5:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah, I saw the, I didn't read the graphic novel, but I saw the movie. I think that's like best of genre. What a stunning film that was.
5:27 Speaker 03 Well, I must say then, I thank you very much because I was the science consultant.
5:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You were!
5:31 Speaker 03 Now, of course, they followed very closely to the graphic novel, so, you know, if I told them that some science was wrong, but it was in the comic book, they were gonna go with the comic book.
5:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They'd go with the book and not you.
5:40 Speaker 03 That's right.
5:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because you're just physics professor from Minnesota.
5:42 Speaker 03 Exactly. But there's a character who, who's taken apart at the subatomic level through sheer force of will, is able to reassemble himself, and now he has independent control over this wave-particle duality. By teleporting himself, he can extend his wave all the way to Mars.
6:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is that how that works?
6:01 Speaker 03 And then he, basically quantum mechanically tunnel, he's, he can make his wave show up at some distant location, and then he would appear there.
6:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So what you're saying is, in quantum mechanics, since a particle can also be a wave, the wave can move across space and then become a particle again in another spot, without the particle ever physically moving from one location to another?
6:21 Speaker 03 I couldn't have said it better.
6:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, and so in Watchmen, he has become a macroscopic
6:29 Speaker 03 Quantum object.
6:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Quantum object.
6:31 Speaker 03 That's exactly right.
6:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So where he can say, "I can become this particle-wave duality myself."
6:35 Speaker 03 Yes.
6:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I can, at will, become the wave and show up where the wave traveled in another spot and reassemble myself, and there I am.
6:43 Speaker 03 Exactly. In quantum mechanics...
6:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Why can't we do that?
6:46 Speaker 03 Because we don't have independent control over our quantum mechanical waves. Our quantum mechanical waves, we have them, they're a trillion trillion times smaller than a nucleus. And so they're undetectable, they're unobservable.
7:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're too big. We're too big and we have a small wave because it's the opposite of their size.
7:05 Speaker 03 Exactly right.
7:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And the small particles have big waves.
7:08 Speaker 03 Here's another thing that Dr. Manhattan can do. Schrodinger will say that the quantum mechanical wave function contains all information, past, present, and future about the evolution of the system. Dr. Manhattan has knowledge of both the past, present, and his future.
7:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So that's why he would sort of drift off and reflect on...
7:26 Speaker 03 And be able to know what was going to happen.
7:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wow.
7:29 Speaker 03 Because he had independent control over his quantum mechanical wave function.
7:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So they thought this through a bit.
7:34 Speaker 03 You know what, I've talked to the artist and no, they didn't.
7:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They didn't.
7:38 Speaker 03 They pretty much...
7:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So they stumbled on it.
7:40 Speaker 03 But you know, just because some choices were made for random reasons, doesn't mean that I can't obsess over the physics that would underlie that if it was done deliberately.
7:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Michio, let's back up for a minute. Let me ask you something. I don't think most people think about or reflect on the difference between classical physics, which is really our everyday experience, and quantum physics. So could you give me like a one-minute version of how we should think about the difference between the two?
8:10 Michio Kaku? Well, if I had a super microscope and could look at an electron, I would see it disappear, reappear someplace else. I could see it being two places at the same time.
8:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is really useful stuff to have a power to do, isn't it?
8:24 Michio Kaku? Yeah, that's right. In fact, that's why we have lasers. That's why we have transistors. Lasers and transistors violate every single aspect of common sense. They totally are non-common-sensical.
8:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So our common sense issues forth from the classical physics realm.
8:38 Michio Kaku? That's right. Common sense is wrong. Sorry about that, okay? What you believe in is common sense. Everybody knows that's common sense, but is wrong. At the atomic level, electrons can beam across. We do this now regularly with our devices. We can beam electrons 600 meters. That's the world's record now for... Quantum teleportation. And they can be two places at the same time, and they can enter parallel universes. So these are parallel states which Einstein thought was so freaky, so bizarre, so spooky, that he couldn't get his head around it. Even Einstein had a hard time, but hey, that's why we have lasers, that's why we have iPods and GPS.
9:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's no hope for the rest of us, if Einstein could not wrap his head around that.
9:19 Michio Kaku? But if you could master that at the macroscopic level, at you and me at our level, you would have the power of a god. You would be able to manipulate matter at will.
9:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, then everyone would be a god, and we'd have to invent a new kind of power that would none of us had.
9:33 Michio Kaku? Who do you pray to then if everyone's a god?
9:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ah, the mediocre god. The guy with no powers at all. It's like, whoa, I want that.
9:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That guy's our god now. James Kukalios chatted a bit with me about just the role of quantum physics in modern technology, and let's see where he takes us on that.
9:53 Speaker 03 Here we are in the 21st century. We were promised jetpacks and flying cars, and we got cellphones and laptop computers instead. The difference is, the writers of the science fiction pulps and comic books thought that we'd have a revolution in energy, necessary for jetpacks and death rays.
10:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And flying cars.
10:10 Speaker 03 And what we got instead was a revolution in information. That information age is made possible by semiconductors and solid-state physics.
10:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All of which is founded on quantum mechanics.
10:20 Speaker 03 All of which is made possible by quantum mechanics, exactly right. The first science fiction pulp magazine, Amazing Stories, starts publishing in the beginning of 1926. Also publishing in 1926, Erwin Schrodinger, publishing the Schrodinger equation that would be the foundation of modern quantum theory.
10:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So this is where he says, not only is matter matter, it's also a wave.
10:39 Speaker 03 Correct, and he found, basically...
10:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The wave-particle duality.
10:42 Speaker 03 He guessed the equation that would describe these waves. You tell me the forces acting on the electrons in the atom, and I'll tell you what this wave-particle duality function is doing. And so, from this, basic physics, a generation later, we get the transistor and the laser.
11:00 Michio Kaku? A generation later, still, we get iPods, cell phones, laptops, DVDs, everything without which life is not worth living. None of these are possible without the transistor or the laser, neither of which is possible without quantum mechanics. If you went to Schrodinger and said, "Nice equation, Erwin. What's it good for?"
11:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm.
11:20 Michio Kaku? He's not gonna say, "Well, if you wanna store music in a compact digital format..."
11:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, right. If you wanna make an iPhone one day, yeah.
11:27 Michio Kaku? But without this basic curiosity-driven research, the world we live in would be profoundly different.
11:35 Speaker 02 Wow.
11:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Tells it like it is.
11:37 Speaker 02 That is awesome. I just like the fact that he mocked him with his own name.
11:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Erwin.
11:42 Speaker 02 Erwin.
11:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, Michio, most people, we get back to our common sense sense of the world. Most people, you let go of an object that drops. You walk, there's a force, you know, rain falls from the sky. And that's how we built our common sense of the world.
11:59 Michio Kaku? Right.
11:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Newton's laws and Galileo and all these folks operated in this classical world. But a hundred years ago or so, people realized that the fundamental identity of the world is not prescribed this way. And what enabled that? Was it microscopes or accelerators? Didn't you make a particle accelerator in your house one day?
12:17 Michio Kaku? That's right. When I was in high school, I built an atom smasher. A six-kilowatt, 2.3-million-electrical atom smasher in the garage.
12:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
12:25 Michio Kaku? I blew out every single circuit breaker in the house. My poor mom thought, "Oh, my God, he's blowing out the circuit breakers again." And she thought, "Why can't I give him a baseball or a basketball? And why can't he date a nice Japanese girl? I mean, what's wrong with him? He builds atom smashes in the garage." But I can't complain. It got me to Harvard.
12:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
12:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you were early on trying to develop a new kind of common sense that was not founded in classical physics.
12:49 Michio Kaku? That's right. Our common sense conception of the world is totally wrong. When I look at myself in the mirror, I don't really see myself as I really am. First of all, I see myself as a billionth of a second ago 'cause that's the time it takes for a light to go from my face to the mirror and back. Second of all, I'm actually a wave. I'm actually vibrating. And some of my waves do go to Mars and Venus.
13:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We've gotta take a quick break, but more StarTalk when we return.
13:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back and we're talking about superheroes. I've got with me Chuck Nice, comedian, and also with me, my special guest, Professor Michio Kaku. In my running interview with James Cacalios, professor of physics at the University of Minnesota, he wrote the book on superheroes called "The Physics of Superheroes." He actually describes a connection between superheroes, their powers, the subatomic world, and astrophysics. Sweet. It's sweet, and that's one of my favorite subjects, so let's check out where he takes us there.
14:06 Speaker 03 One of my all-time favorites has to be the atom, a DC Comics superhero who could shrink down to subatomic size, not just because his size-changing was a cool power, but in his secret identity, he was Ray Palmer, physics professor.
14:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, so therefore you have a secret passion that...
14:25 Speaker 03 He was a role model, and this you will appreciate because there's an astrophysics connection. Ray Palmer developed a device to shrink that used a lens created from a white dwarf star.
14:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This would be the star at the end of its evolution, so the sun is going to become a white dwarf.
14:40 Speaker 03 Right.
14:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The remnant core of what we now enjoy as the full sun
14:44 Speaker 03 Right.
14:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? will one day lose all its outer layers and lay bare a dead core, and life on Earth will be long gone by then.
14:49 Speaker 03 And in his origin story, he finds this white dwarf meteorite, and he's struggling, huffing and puffing as he brings it to his car.
14:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because white dwarf matter is very dense.
14:58 Speaker 03 It's extremely dense. It weighs about 3 million grams per cubic centimeter, whereas water weighs 1 gram per cubic centimeter.
15:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So 3 million times the density of water.
15:07 Speaker 03 Correct. And we look at this rock, and if we assume it's a sphere with a radius of 6 inches, we can understand why Ray Palmer is huffing and puffing, because it should weigh over 50,000 tons. But I must point out that this is not actually a blooper, and that is because we physics professors are just that strong.
15:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, you see, size doesn't matter then, right?
15:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Michio, are you that strong?
15:39 Michio Kaku? No, but maybe Superman might be. People say Superman came from a planet going around a red star. Why not coming from a white star? If Superman were made out of white dwarf material, he would be invulnerable. He could take any bullet, he could take any kind of explosion, and he'd come out smelling like a rose. Of course, there's a problem. He'd also sink to the center of the Earth.
16:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, ignoring that complication, though.
16:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But Chuck, over the break, you mentioned something, you were reflecting on this wave-particle duality, about if you could do that as a full-up human being?
16:13 Speaker 02 Yeah, because Michio said that atoms actually existed in places at one time, and it sparked in me remembering the movie Watchmen, where Dr. Manhattan was very engrossed in this experiment that he was working on, and realized he had been neglecting his wife. And so he, making love to his wife, only for her to realize that he was also still working on his experiment in the next room.
16:38 Michio Kaku? So here's a science experiment. Take an electron and have it make it loveless to its wife, and see whether it could also coexist someplace else.
16:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Michio, is that what you do in your lab?
16:47 Michio Kaku? You see, being a physicist can be fun.
16:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Electron porn, atomic porn.
16:51 Speaker 02 Atomic porn. Alright. Michio, you're my kinda man.
16:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? James Kukalios also talks about a power over the periodic table of elements. You remember that mysterious chart of boxes that hung in your chemistry class?
17:06 Speaker 02 Well, no, I went to a public school. We couldn't afford the chart.
17:09 Michio Kaku? Those are the kind of pin-ups he has at his high school. Pinning up the periodic chart.
17:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, in my high school, the Bronx High School of Science, there was a periodic table of elements in gym class, right?
17:18 Speaker 02 Oh, right on.
17:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let's see what he tells us about control over the properties of elements themselves.
17:25 Speaker 03 There was another character, published by Gold Key, Dr. Solar. You notice that when these physicists are disassembled and manage to reassemble themselves in quantum powers, they still insist on being called Doctor.
17:38 Speaker 03 I suppose if you could survive graduate school, you're going to insist on this. He came first, long before Dr. Manhattan. Anything he touched suddenly changed into another element.
17:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So he was a tactile alchemist?
17:52 Speaker 03 Well, not just tactile. He was a tactile reverse beta decayist. He was basically only transforming things one up the periodic table.
18:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh.
18:01 Speaker 03 And there is a...
18:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So he would touch an element and would become a heavier element than it was before he touched it?
18:05 Speaker 03 But just one space heavier, only one proton more.
18:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
18:09 Speaker 03 And so he was inducing a neutron in the nucleus of that element.
18:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To decay into a proton.
18:14 Speaker 03 Into a proton and an electron, thus becoming the next element over. This is a known, real, physical phenomenon, and the fact that they limited it only to that implies that they were, in fact, invoking this nuclear reaction.
18:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It means somebody took Physics 101.
18:30 Speaker 03 Well, I think that's more of a 201.
18:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The 201 of physics.
18:34 Michio Kaku? There's a small catch there. When you transmute one element to another, it becomes highly radioactive. There's a burst of neutrons that'll disintegrate your body, and you will die in the process. Sorry about that.
18:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But ignoring that complication.
18:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, why you gotta be such a killjoy?
18:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Alright, so we have quantum powers, we got super-dense powers, we have possibly powers locked within stars in the universe. How about supernova power? Michio, what do you think of that? Can we harness that one day?
19:02 Michio Kaku? Well, there is a superhero that does that. Phoenix. Phoenix is the most powerful of all superheroes ever conceived of by the human mind. Phoenix actually was, appeared in the last X-Men movie, X-Men 3, I think. And Phoenix could destroy an entire planet.
19:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
19:19 Michio Kaku? It was the strongest, most powerful superhero.
19:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, just to clarify, so a supernova, a high-mass star at the end of its life goes unstable after it runs out of fuel in its core. It collapses, and there's heat generated from that collapse that blows the guts of this star to where else but smithereens.
19:37 Speaker 03 Right.
19:37 Speaker 02 And guess what? That power, of course, in the X-Men resides in a woman.
19:43 Michio Kaku? A woman scorn.
19:46 Speaker 02 That's right.
19:47 Michio Kaku? To blow up planets.
19:48 Speaker 02 And she is PO, buddy.
19:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Alright, so we do have supernova power, how about a black hole power? How about that?
19:56 Michio Kaku? I've never seen that in the movies.
19:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because that would be kind of a dual power. There's like the, if you go too close, you get lost. But in the vicinity of a black hole, it's quite radiant.
20:06 Michio Kaku? Right.
20:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because all this matter is trying to get in and the hole is very small.
20:09 Michio Kaku? Right.
20:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so it starts to spiral in, it gets hot from spiraling, and it gets so hot it radiates X-rays.
20:16 Michio Kaku? Yeah, however, there is a theory that says that at the center of a spinning black hole, there may be a gateway to another universe. That's the solution of Einstein's equation, if you follow the math. And Alice in Wonderland exploited that.
20:29 Speaker 02 Yeah, that math went right by me.
20:34 Speaker 02 I don't know how you follow that math.
20:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, so Michio, you think this is what happened in Alice in Wonderland?
20:39 Michio Kaku? That's right. Alice in Wonderland was written by a professional mathematician, Professor Charles Dodgson of Oxford University, writing under the pen name of Lewis Carroll. And the looking glass could be the center of a black hole. It is mathematically, there's a one-to-one correspondence between the center of a black hole and the looking glass of Alice.
20:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A spinning, a spinning black hole.
21:01 Michio Kaku? Spinning black hole, that's right.
21:03 Speaker 02 Or it could be that that doctor found his way into some really cool mushroom tea.
21:11 Michio Kaku? We won't talk about that.
21:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Again, that's the Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde version of that. So, the power over the periodic table, that's, I think that's an untapped talent that no one's talked much about.
21:25 Speaker 02 No, but now, of course, as the stupid guy in the room, what would be the purpose of that?
21:32 Michio Kaku? You get gold from nothing.
21:33 Speaker 02 Okay, there you have it. Thank you very much, sir. I am sufficiently educated. Makes perfect sense. I want that power.
21:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Michio, I know you're a brilliant lecturer and though I've never actually attended one of your lectures, I've certainly seen you speak and lecture in person and on television. Do you ever invoke superhero powers in your Physics 101s?
21:57 Michio Kaku? Well, yes, in the sense that people ask me, "How did I get into theoretical physics and string theory and stuff like that?" When I was a kid, I used to idolize Albert Einstein, but also used to watch Flash Gordon on television. And I'm not the only one mesmerized by these figures. Carl Sagan, Carl Sagan used to read the John Carter of Mars series.
22:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What is that series?
22:19 Michio Kaku? Uh, John Carter of Mars series was created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, who created Tarzan. And he goes, John Carter goes to Mars and becomes a superhero on Mars because of low gravity. Now, remember that this was back in the 20s and 30s. Later, uh, some people said, "Hey, let's make a comic book around John Carter of Mars, except put him on Krypton instead."
22:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you're telling me Superman is derivative product?
22:43 Michio Kaku? That's right. Superman is a rip-off. He's a rip-off of John Carter of Mars, who's coming back next year. Disney is coming out with a movie on John Carter of Mars next year.
22:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, did John Carter have a cape?
22:54 Michio Kaku? Uh, no, no. Well, in the comic book, he did. Uh, he was made into a comic book. I used to read their John Carter of Mars comic books when I was a kid. And yeah, he had a cape, and he has superpowers, and he battled the Tharks of Mars and saved the princess, uh, Deja Thora, and that became Lois Lane.
23:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's cousin of Déjà Vu, the Deja Thora. Michio, no, Chuck, if you had a superpower, what would be your top superpower?
23:19 Speaker 02 Oh, wow. Man, that's a good one. Hmm. I don't know. I kinda love teleportation.
23:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right.
23:25 Speaker 02 But I don't wanna, I don't want it to be just teleportation here on Earth. I wanna be able to teleport to anywhere in the universe without any ill effects.
23:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No side effects, right. No nausea, no constipation.
23:40 Speaker 02 Right, exactly.
23:40 Michio Kaku? Radiation sickness.
23:41 Speaker 02 No radiation sickness.
23:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No constipation.
23:43 Speaker 02 No constipation, right, exactly.
23:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Michio, how about you?
23:46 Speaker 02 No dry mouth.
23:46 Michio Kaku? Well, the answer's obvious. If you're a Green Lantern, you control the power of a god. You can materialize energy in any shape or form and absorb all the superpowers of everybody else.
23:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, there you go. What's left?
23:58 Speaker 02 Yeah. See, that's too much power for me to have. You're a responsible adult. I know I couldn't handle that. I know I couldn't handle that.
24:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? See, I'm a little more modest with... I want to be able to read minds. Then you can read the mind of the criminal before the crime is committed and you just, like, let out the air in their tires or something.
24:16 Michio Kaku? You're a precog.
24:17 Speaker 02 Never get mugged.
24:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A precog.
24:18 Speaker 02 You're a precog. That's pretty cool.
24:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right. You never get mugged because you'll see, you read the minds.
24:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When we come back, more on the physics of superheroes. Don't go away.
24:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? StarTalk returns with the second part of the Physics of Superheroes, and I'm here with Chuck Nice and Professor Michio Kaku. Thanks again for being my special guests on StarTalk Radio.
25:00 Speaker 02 Could not be happier.
25:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so we're joining my interview that I conducted with a physics professor at the University of Minnesota, James Kokalios, and he wrote the book The Physics of Superheroes. And I couldn't help but ask him about all the different powers and all the different branches of physics represented among these superheroes. So, let's see what this latest segment tells us about electromagnetism, the science of lights.
25:27 Speaker 03 Professor X of the X-Men can read minds. That's not so crazy either. Right now, when we're thinking, there are electrical currents in our brain, and these electrical currents create electromagnetic fields that radiate outside of the brain.
25:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Are you sure everyone who's thinking has electrical currents going on in their brain? I think we all know people for which that's probably not the case.
25:49 Speaker 03 More or less. Let's just stipulate, as the lawyers would say. And so there are electromagnetic waves that are being emanated. Now, these waves are weak.
25:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, in other words, when you have electrical currents, which we know is going on across the synapses of the brain, there's electromagnetic fields that are associated with those currents.
26:06 Speaker 03 With those changing electric currents.
26:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, and so that field would get out of your head.
26:10 Speaker 03 It can.
26:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is the, what's the machine that reads your brain? EEG.
26:14 Speaker 03 EEG.
26:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Electroencephalogram.
26:16 Speaker 03 Uh, that's exactly what that is doing.
26:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It doesn't have to dig open your skull.
26:20 Speaker 03 No, it's picking up those electromagnetic waves that are emanating from your brain.
26:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, if that can do it, then surely Mr. X can do it.
26:26 Speaker 03 Professor X.
26:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Professor X.
26:28 Speaker 03 He didn't go to graduate school for you to be calling him Mr. X.
26:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Excuse me!
26:32 Speaker 03 But, the waves that we generate from these electromagnetic fields are about a billion times weaker than the radio waves that are in the room right now, which is how you're able to listen to the radio.
26:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, one billionth as strong. You need some awesome decoders for this.
26:47 Speaker 03 So, you had, and some very sensitive receptors. You know, in the X-Men movie, he uses a device, Cerebro, in order to find a distant mutant. And the room is in a large spherical...
26:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Sphere.
26:58 Speaker 03 Sphere.
26:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Like a planetarium dome.
26:59 Speaker 03 Exactly.
27:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But, under your feet as well, as above.
27:02 Speaker 03 I think the purpose of that shielded spherical room is not to amplify his powers, but to shield the radio waves.
27:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's the famous Faraday cage.
27:11 Speaker 03 Exactly.
27:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Start talking to listeners about a Faraday cage.
27:13 Speaker 03 Okay, so a Faraday cage is basically...
27:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Named after?
27:16 Speaker 03 Michael Faraday, who was one of the founding fathers of electromagnetism.
27:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know what I heard? That if you value all of the industries and technologies that derive from his inventions, it's more than a trillion dollars?
27:28 Speaker 03 I believe it easily, easily.
27:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And this is the mid-1800s when he was busy.
27:32 Speaker 03 Well, and he was actually asked, I think by King George, what is the purpose of this device that he made using his principles of electromagnetism? And he said, "I know not, sir, but I am sure that you'll find a way to tax it."
27:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, Faraday cage.
27:45 Speaker 03 A Faraday cage is basically a shielded room so that if any of the electromagnetic waves strike the walls...
27:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? From the outside?
27:52 Speaker 03 From the outside, they are sent down to ground and don't make it inside the center of the room. To demonstrate this, I had a radio on in the classroom, but the whole thing was inside a large metal cage that was grounded so that none... None of the radio waves that were present in the room made it to the antenna.
28:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm.
28:10 Speaker 03 And I pointed out to the students that right now, we don't notice it. We don't realize that we're inside a sea of electromagnetic waves or radio waves. We don't see this, but we don't realize that we're surrounded by. And I raised the cage off, freeing the antenna to record the signal. At that moment, Tony Bennett belted out the word, "Love." And so I said, "You don't realize that we are surrounded by a sea of love."
28:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You did this in your physics class.
28:38 Speaker 03 I did it once, and I'll never be able to do it again.
28:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
28:41 Speaker 03 So, sometimes, timing is everything.
28:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, basically, that room wasn't just a cool visual effect for the cinematographer. It's had some foundations in the physics of electricity and electromagnetism.
28:52 Speaker 03 Why not?
28:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
28:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, so, what we have here is, I mean, there's obviously much more to light and electromagnetism than was in that clip. Michio, Superman had X-ray vision. This is electromagnetism. I'm trying to think of anything, any other sort of electromagnetic powers that people had.
29:13 Michio Kaku? Well, the Invisible Girl has the power of invisibility, which we will harness in the coming decades. The Pentagon is giving us physicists hundreds of millions of dollars to perfect invisibility, ala Harry Potter and the Invisible Girl. The cloak.
29:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The invisibility cloak.
29:29 Michio Kaku? That's right. The invisibility cloak. That's coming. And also, a mind-reading. I had, I had my mind read. BBC Television put me in an MRI machine that shot radio into my brain, and they looked for echoes from my brain. I counted down, one, two, three, four, five, and bingo.
29:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They'll be counting up.
29:48 Michio Kaku? All right. Five, four, three, two, one. And then, you can actually see a part in my brain light up like a Christmas tree, inside my thinking brain, showing that I was thinking a certain thought. In the future, we will have the power of telepathy. We'll be able to look into people's minds, see what they're thinking or not thinking about, and be able to reproduce this with a computer.
30:10 Speaker 02 But I gotta tell you, that future is now. I don't know if you've ever met my wife.
30:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? She knows where.
30:16 Speaker 02 But let me tell you, she knows my every move, buddy.
30:19 Michio Kaku? Then you're the Invisible Man, right?
30:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. So, when she actually, actually asks you, "Where have you been tonight?", she already knows.
30:24 Speaker 02 She already knows.
30:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? She's just fact-checking.
30:26 Speaker 02 And guess what? She tells me that she already knows. I'm like, "Ah, nothing, I was just hanging out." She's like, "You don't think I know?"
30:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
30:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So what I wonder here is if, Mitya, what you're describing comes true, then whole branches of superhero powers become uninteresting to be written into superhero characters. What kind of fun, what kind of world are you doing, are you creating for us?
30:51 Michio Kaku? Well, we will attain many of these superpowers, but hey, it's still neat, you know, heat vision, eyes, x-ray vision. It's still neat to have those powers.
31:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But I want superheroes to have it and not ordinary people, and you're telling us that ordinary, I saw you on TV the other day talking about a superhero outfit that we might have one day. That's super powerful, with one of, any one of us could lift a car. Where's that power coming from?
31:14 Michio Kaku? Nanotechnology will have the ability to manipulate individual atoms. With graphene, as I mentioned, we'll be able to create super suits with nano muscles, be able to lift like the Hulk, gigantic objects. And the Pentagon, again, is pioneering this with exoskeleton technology. They want to create the super soldier of the battlefield. You'll have the internet in your contact lens, you'll blink and you'll be online, you'll be able to recognize objects, people's faces.
31:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait a minute, at that level, what do you need the person in the suit for? Just send out the suit?
31:46 Michio Kaku? Yeah, send the suit.
31:47 Speaker 02 And plus, you don't want to be able to give people the internet in their brains, because people would just sit around with their eyes closed all day looking at porn.
31:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Has the military thought that one through all the way?
31:57 Speaker 02 I don't think they have. Why aren't our soldiers fighting?
32:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know, there's another really important part of superhero culture, and that's the fact that every one of them that I've ever seen has a nemesis, some kind of complimentary power.
32:12 Michio Kaku? A creptanite of some sort, right?
32:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And let's see where James Kekalios takes us on that one.
32:16 Speaker 03 It's important from a storytelling, because if a character has no vulnerabilities or no weakness, then there's nothing to challenge them and there's nothing for them to overcome. But it's also important from the physics. Whatever type of force you're exerting, there always has to be some counterbalancing force. The Flash, who could run at super speed, one of his arch-nemesis was Captain Cold, who could create frozen regions. And if you put ice underneath the Flash, you could be as fast as you want, but if there's no friction between your boot and the ground, you're not going anywhere.
32:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He's spinning his wheels.
32:51 Speaker 03 He's spinning his wheels.
32:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It'd be like in the Flintstones, where before the car starts, the features go.
32:56 Speaker 03 In a constant circle blur.
32:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Circle blur, yeah.
33:00 Speaker 03 And so, very often, what you might find is that the villains have a power that's kind of like the anti, or the counterbalancing force for the hero's strengths. And so, it provides an illustration that there's always two sides to a coin.
33:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So that reminds me of that famous line from Batman: Dark Knight, where Keith Ledger, as Joker, says, "I complete you."
33:24 Speaker 03 That's right. Joker, in fact, is a perfect villain for Batman. Batman is the world's greatest detective, he's all about control, he's all about rationality, and Joker is all about chaos and insanity and unreason. And that's why they're the yin and yang together. When Batman ever retires, the Joker in the comic books kind of goes catatonic. Because without Batman to push against, forces come in pairs.
33:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So if Isaac Newton only knew that his laws of motion were being tapped in deep philosophical, cultural ways.
33:56 Speaker 03 I know, he'd probably start drinking heavily.
33:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, the opposite force, I like that. That's, and for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction is the full up.
34:09 Speaker 03 Yeah, but more on a philosophical level.
34:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
34:12 Speaker 03 You know, it's like...
34:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's like saying, can there be good without evil?
34:16 Speaker 03 Without evil, right.
34:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Can there be beautiful without ugly? Can there be ugly without butt ugly?
34:23 Speaker 02 Can't be butt ugly without fugly.
34:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's a new one. Where'd you get that one?
34:29 Michio Kaku? Well, you have the point that if we're all superheroes, if we're all gods, right?
34:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
34:33 Michio Kaku? Then it gets a little boring after a while.
34:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It just gets so completely boring.
34:37 Michio Kaku? Right.
34:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In fact, I must say that in the, in the X, uh, um, Watchmen, there's a fight between two of them, each with superhero strength, and that just got really boring.
34:48 Michio Kaku? Yeah.
34:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right? I mean, I needed some difference of strength going on there.
34:52 Speaker 02 Well, that's why the, the good guys always seem to be less powerful than the bad guys, except for Superman. You know, Superman is like almost all-powerful.
35:03 Michio Kaku? You didn't see Superman 2? That's probably the best of all the Superman movies where he goes up against three supervillains simultaneously, right?
35:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And they all had exactly his power.
35:12 Michio Kaku? Right.
35:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But they just weren't as smart as he was. That's what it was. Right, right. So when you have this power and you have your nemesis, then you can actually write stories around it and then, and, and have superheroes behave in a yin yang sort of way. You know, that's just, that's beautiful, I think.
35:30 Speaker 02 I like it.
35:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We've got to take a quick break, but more StarTalk when we return.
35:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is StarTalk Radio. Welcome back. Just to recap, we're talking about the physics of superheroes on StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist. We've got professional comedian, Chuck Nice.
36:12 Michio Kaku? Yes.
36:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And of course, how could we do this without Michio Kaku, professor of physics at the City University of New York? And up till now, we've talked about quantum physics and astrophysics and electromagnetism and the physical concept of forces. This is like Physics 101 going on on this program, and we're not done with you yet. Because in this is an interview that I had with James Kukaleos, professor of physics, University of Minnesota, about his book, The Physics of Superheroes. And in this next clip, he talks about how... Superhero stories kind of reflect people's anxieties about the progress of science of the day. Let's see where he takes us there.
36:53 Speaker 03 Back in the 40s, the world was a much bigger place. There were lots of parts that were unexplored. So often, characters would get powers from finding some hidden artifact in some lost city, or some part of the world that had never been studied. In the 60s, it was radioactivity that gave powers.
37:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because that was the new fear about the radioactive fallout.
37:14 Speaker 03 Exactly. And then now you have, it's more genetic manipulation, and it's more molecular biology that leads to these powers.
37:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you're telling me superheroes attract the progress of science?
37:24 Speaker 03 They attract the progress of science, and they're a way of almost binding the cultural anxiety, whether it's the distant other, or atomic power, or genetic manipulation. It's a way of us trying to control these fears, and by, I think, giving these people amazing powers, and then humiliating them by making them wear their long underwear out in public.
37:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The pantyhose.
37:45 Speaker 03 Spandex is a very unforgiving fabric.
37:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Spandex. You know, because if you look at some of the old Superman TV shows, it's kind of, it's wrinkly a little bit.
37:57 Speaker 02 He is a little wrinkly.
37:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know.
37:59 Speaker 02 He's wearing cotton stockings.
38:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Cotton stockings, right. It was not the quite spandex we have today. So I'm intrigued by this idea that superhero powers are derived from the frontier of science that people still are a little bit afraid of. I mean, some great examples here, I mean Spider-Man, where does he get his powers from?
38:16 Speaker 02 A radioactive spider.
38:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A radioactive spider, you know, and...
38:20 Michio Kaku? Or look at Godzilla. Godzilla comes directly out of radioactive fallout. So here's radioactive fallout having its revenge on society.
38:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And not only that, of course, I mean, Japan was the only country against which an atomic bomb was ever used. And all of these monster movies that were traceable to Japanese film industry, it's not an accident, I presume, that there's a sensitivity to the role that radioactivity played in creating those super monsters.
38:47 Speaker 02 Yes. I guess if they were... I just don't understand why they never moved.
38:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What do you mean?
38:51 Speaker 02 Because he only attacked Japan. It's like, I'm out of here.
38:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Go to another country.
38:55 Speaker 02 I'm out, I'm going to Sweden.
38:57 Michio Kaku? Now, let me also say that there's a good side to mutants, because we are all mutants. We're mutant monkeys. If it wasn't for mutations, we'd all be swinging in the trees right now.
39:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I know some people who still are. What I wonder is that when you speak about mute mutant properties, but still admit that you're human, right, because Superman was not human, but Peter Parker was human.
39:21 Speaker 02 Right.
39:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And Green Lantern, all these people are human. So what's interesting to me is there's some of these superhero stories that decided to look at the social ramifications of being different.
39:32 Speaker 02 Right.
39:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is the foundation of the storytelling in X-Men.
39:35 Speaker 02 That's true.
39:36 Michio Kaku? Well, that's the Marvel revolution, right, that Stan Lee introduced. Before then, everyone was a quote goody-goody. And so they were kind of boring after a while. They were very predictable. You predict exactly what the next Superman comic book was gonna do. Then Marvel comes along and makes him quote, "human."
39:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, that's because Superman is DC Comics. And so Marvel brings up a whole other dimension of this.
39:56 Michio Kaku? Right. So Marvel was in your face, reflecting the times of the 60s and 70s. And that's why Marvel overtook DC Comics because of that fact, that, you know, these were vulnerable people that had identity crises. Peter Parker always wants to give up being Spider-Man.
40:11 Speaker 02 Yes.
40:11 Michio Kaku? Superman would never do that. Give up his suit?
40:15 Speaker 02 The DC guys are always just filled with virtue. Like, you know, never would anybody receive powers and go, "Oh, my God. This is amazing. You are now all my slaves. Every one of you kneel before Zod." Like, I would have been Zod. That's why I don't have any suit. You know, I gotta be honest.
40:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, but, so in this, I mean, it's a way to tell stories that through other means might not have been. So, for example, you see the, you have, was it Magneto? Where he realizes his powers emerging from a concentration camp. And in Nazi.
40:53 Speaker 02 Nazi Germany.
40:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In Nazi Germany. And so, so what's fascinating there is you could have told the story just of them being different. But they have these other layers that go deeper into our culture. Of what it was to be Jewish in a time of Nazi Germany. What it is to be gay in a time of homophobia. What it is to be a different skin color.
41:13 Michio Kaku? Right. Superheroes are a reflection of society. For example, the gods, look at Hercules. Hercules was the first superhero.
41:21 Michio Kaku? superhero.
41:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I guess so. I never thought of him that way.
41:23 Michio Kaku? You go all the way back and the superheroes of old were basically the gods of mythology.
41:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, yeah.
41:30 Speaker 02 I just, you just made me realize that Magneto is the first Jewish superhero. I didn't even realize that.
41:37 Michio Kaku? Nah, wait a minute, wait a minute, a minute. Simon and Seagull created Superman.
41:42 Speaker 02 What's that?
41:42 Michio Kaku? Superman in some sense was the first Jewish superhero.
41:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, just because his creators were Jewish doesn't mean Superman himself was Jewish.
41:48 Speaker 02 Superman was Jewish, because he can't be Jewish. He's from Krypton.
41:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He's from Krypton.
41:51 Speaker 02 You know?
41:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Judaism in Krypton.
41:52 Speaker 02 Whereas Magneto came out of a concentration camp.
41:55 Michio Kaku? Explicitly.
41:56 Speaker 02 He was explicitly Jewish, which is awesome to have a Jewish superhero, like, I am gonna rip this bridge from its foundation and then I'm gonna have a bagel with a smear and I'm good to go. Like, that's awesome.
42:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And doesn't he even still have the?
42:10 Michio Kaku? He's the first circumcised superhero.
42:12 Speaker 02 I wasn't gonna get that personal.
42:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, I was gonna say that, and I said, "No, let me not," and then Michio ups and, "I will not question how you acquired that evidence."
42:25 Speaker 02 Oh, that's awesome.
42:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, Michio, the CERN supercollider.
42:31 Michio Kaku? Mm-hmm, right.
42:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uses the word "super" in it. Is that, you think there's something that will discover that'll give a superpower here, the superpowers of the future?
42:40 Michio Kaku? Well, there's gotta be some way to make physics professors sexy, you know, Captain Physics Professor.
42:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just, the CERN is the supercollider, it's the European Center for Nuclear Research, and an acronym, you spell CERN in French. But out of there, it's the most powerful accelerator in the world.
43:00 Michio Kaku? Right, 17 miles in circumference, recreating a miniature Big Bang right before our eyes. It's not gonna eat up the Earth, there's no black hole that's gonna be coming out of it, right?
43:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But if they were, you'd be in charge of it, I bet. You'd make, turn it into a superhero.
43:13 Speaker 02 In your garage.
43:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In his garage. I don't trust Michio for a minute. Time to wrap up the show. I want to thank my guests, and as always, I bid you to keep looking up.
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