Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast The Physics of Superheroes About this episode Faster than a speeding bullet? More powerful than a locomotive? James Kakalios, physics professor and author of "The Physics of Superheroes" discusses the science behind the amazing powers of our favorite caped crusaders.
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? Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and this is one of my favorite subjects of all time. We're going to talk about the physics of superheroes. Patrolling the streets of Gotham, swinging on a spider's web, leaping tall buildings in a single bound, and I can't do that alone. I need help. And I combed the streets of Gotham and I found Eugene Mirman. Eugene?
0:43 Speaker 01 Hello.
0:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome back to StarTalk.
0:44 Speaker 01 It's great to be back.
0:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I couldn't do this segment without you, you know.
0:48 Speaker 01 No, no.
0:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I knew you'd have something to say about every one of these things.
0:51 Speaker 01 I do. I have an opinion about all of it. I even brought a ring powered by willpower.
0:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is that right?
0:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
0:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know someone named Will Power?
0:58 Speaker 01 No.
1:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Eugene, do you have some favorite superheroes?
1:03 Speaker 01 Um, one, all of them.
1:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, that's a cop-out answer. Come on now.
1:08 Speaker 01 Okay. No, I'll get specific. Jeez. Green Lantern. I'm a big fan of Green Lantern. He has a ring that is powered by willpower, and he controls the universe, just like any good person would.
1:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What's with all the green? There's like Green Hornet, and you know, what's with the green?
1:23 Speaker 01 I don't know.
1:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
1:25 Speaker 01 It was not of my design.
1:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. So the Green Lantern, what else? Anybody else?
1:31 Speaker 01 Batman, because he's like Mr. T. He's like mean to criminals but really nice to children.
1:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Except, he's got a cape, but he can't fly. I never quite understood that.
1:41 Speaker 01 He can't fly, but he is also just really great at a lot of... I don't know. He's just a smart guy with a lot of gadgets.
1:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it helps that he's a billionaire and can build whatever he wants.
1:52 Speaker 01 And very mad. He's super angry.
1:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Don't piss off a superhero. So we're going to explore all different features of superheroes. Some that they're born with, some that they're genetically engineered to have, other features that are acquired by technology. There's no end to this subject. In fact, I don't see how we can fit it all into one show. I don't even know if that's possible.
2:13 Speaker 01 Maybe we won't stop. Maybe at the end of the hour, we will just keep recording.
2:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Somebody's going to cut us off. And so, what we did to make the show happen is, there's a colleague of mine, a physicist, who is at the University of Minnesota, his name is James Kakalios.
2:29 Speaker 01 It's a very pretty name.
2:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It is beautiful, and he's a physics professor at University of Minnesota, and he's author of The Physics of Superheroes. Now, how could I not interview this guy for StarTalk Radio? And guess who published that book?
2:43 Speaker 01 Well, I could guess really accurately, or do you want me to ask? Because it's Gotham Publishing.
2:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Gotham Books. What a, it can't, there couldn't have been anybody else but Gotham Books. I don't know if they invented it just for that book or not. So, let's, let's just get started, right with, with the first clip from my interview. We had met up in Los Angeles at a conference, and I'd snap, pulled out my microphone, and grabbed every minute I could of his time. One of his favorite superheroes is the Flash.
3:10 Speaker 01 Oh.
3:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Flash goes really fast through the atmosphere, but that could be bad, if you don't have, like, heat shields and things.
3:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, he is, he breaks the speed force.
3:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, let's find out.
3:21 Speaker 02 From the point of view of teaching physics, the Flash, who can run at super speed, is a great character.
3:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How fast does the Flash run?
3:26 Speaker 02 Well, in some cases, he's run faster than the speed of light. In one story, he found that, as he was trying to run at the speed of light, he was going slower, and he was becoming heavier.
3:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh, they're invoking some relativity there.
3:40 Speaker 02 They were, those who know Einstein's special theory of relativity know exactly why the Flash was getting heavier. An alien was shooting him with a gravity-increasing ray. But, if you took it out of context, it was a beautiful illustration of Einstein's principle.
3:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What accounts for Flash's speed? I don't remember.
3:55 Speaker 02 Oh, he was struck by lightning and doused with chemicals at the same time, and rather than suffering any type of neurological damage, he obviously gained the ability to run at super speed.
4:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And rather than dying.
4:08 Speaker 02 Exactly, yes. The ability to run at super speed, the interesting thing, when you look at it from a physics point of view, there's a host of other secondary powers that you need if you want to fully run at super speed. For example, you need to be able to have super acceleration or super deceleration. Because otherwise you'll only be able to start running at say thirty-two feet per second per second. And it would take you a while to get up to.
4:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What you're saying is you can't accelerate faster than gravity allows you to.
4:37 Speaker 02 Correct, yes.
4:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
4:39 Speaker 02 Now you also need to be able to overcome air resistance.
4:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wouldn't some of them just burn up moving through the air that fast?
4:44 Speaker 02 Exactly right. In fact, in one issue with the Flash, he lost, he's still able to run at super speed, but he lost his ability to ignore the air resistance. And so his power was limited because if he ran too fast, that's exactly what happened.
4:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So that's one where whatever his version of the heat shields would be, or his version of how he can part the air.
5:02 Speaker 02 Absolutely. That's right. Pushing the air out of the way.
5:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? At least they thought about that problem.
5:05 Speaker 02 And as a kid, reading this in the sixties, I was actually embarrassed because I knew that meteorites burned up in the atmosphere. And it never occurred to me that the Flash should also be burning up.
5:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Now you know you have a geek on your hand when he's, he's upset with himself for not judging Flash correctly after having already known that meteorites burn up in the atmosphere, Eugene.
5:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's true.
5:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's, so you know about.
5:27 Speaker 01 But meteorites can't access the speed force, so there's the flaw there.
5:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's, clearly, that's the problem. So, you know, Earth plows through anywhere between one and three hundred tons of meteors a day.
5:39 Speaker 01 Really?
5:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, this is how much debris is just hanging around the solar system, leftover. And we just vacuum it up. That sounds like it's a lot of weight compared to a human being or a truck, but it's really small compared to Earth. So Earth just, just brushes this off. And some of them are big enough to make it all the way down and not completely burn up. If you find them, then we call that a meteorite. And so if you want to get your vocabulary.
6:00 Speaker 01 Straight.
6:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Straight.
6:02 Speaker 01 I do.
6:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so what happens is they're going ten miles per second. That's really fast. And then they slow down coming into the atmosphere. That energy, kinetic energy, has to go somewhere. And you don't lose or gain energy for free. And in the case of the meteorite, in the case of the space shuttle, all that energy speed gets converted to heat. And in the space shuttle, it dissipates with the tiles. In the meteorite, it goes back into the meteor, shooting through the atmosphere, and it burns up and you see it as a beautiful shooting star at night.
6:30 Speaker 01 Oh.
6:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Isn't that beautiful?
6:31 Speaker 01 That is really pretty.
6:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so if you like the, you said before the clip that you like the green.
6:38 Speaker 01 Lantern.
6:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Lantern. But, but if you had your own superheroes, what do you, your own superpowers, what do you think you'd want?
6:44 Speaker 01 Um, well, uh.
6:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So clearly you haven't thought about this.
6:48 Speaker 01 Well, I can't.
6:50 Speaker 01 I mean.
6:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I thought every guy has thought this through completely.
6:52 Speaker 01 Well, I mean, but we're, I mean, one, I'd love, uh, you know, maybe just a cape. Maybe that'd be nice enough, but then part of me is like, I don't know. Do I want to be able to, uh, have some, like somebody shoot me and then the, the bullet bounces off? That sounds nice, but then I'd really rather fly, even though it's useless. But how fun would it be to fly? But then I'd need to be resistant to cold and all this stuff. It just becomes exhausting. It's not that I haven't thought about it, it's that I get sleepy thinking about how many powers. Telekinesis, it'd be great.
7:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To move stuff at a distance.
7:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, with your mind, it'd, it'd be mostly very convenient, so.
7:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, let's get back in my interview. In my interview, we talked about realistic superpowers versus unrealistic ones. And let's see where.
7:31 Speaker 01 So cape realistic, telekinesis, meh.
7:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, cape can be real, it's whether or not it allows you to fly, which clearly it didn't for Batman and it did for Superman. Let's see where realism takes us. Let's start there, most realistic.
7:45 Speaker 02 Okay, I often say Batman because he doesn't have any powers. Of course, the number of times.
7:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And of course, he can't fly.
7:51 Speaker 02 That's correct. The number of times he's been knocked unconscious in his crime fighting career over 60 years. He should be permanently brain damaged at this point, so obviously he has some sort of Homer Simpson extra thick padding or something.
8:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I would have thought that behaving that way from the beginning was evidence of brain damage.
8:07 Speaker 02 Dressing up like Dracula, going out and beating up muggers is not usually a sign of stability. Iron Man is actually a good example because there's only one miracle exemption from the laws of nature you have to accept. That he has a power supply that could run the suit. There are exoskeletons, there are jet packs.
8:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, but that's just a power supply we haven't perfected yet.
8:27 Speaker 02 Well, in the movie, the 2008 movie, Iron Man, he has a power.
8:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's with the Robert Downey Jr.
8:32 Speaker 02 Exactly, he has a, a power supply about the size of a hockey puck that puts out the energy of about three nuclear power plants. So if we had something like that, superheroes would be the least of our trouble.
8:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's a good point. Who's the most unrealistic superhero? Is it Elastic Man or something?
8:48 Speaker 02 Well, yeah, certainly characters who can stretch. There are characters who can change size, so you have to wonder where their missing mass either came from or went to.
8:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, they're not getting just less dense?
8:58 Speaker 02 Well, that's an excellent point, and there's a beautiful illustration of this.
9:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But just to clarify, if you are one size and later on you're another size, and you don't add any material to you, you have to be less dense than you were before.
9:10 Speaker 02 Yes, you inflated like in a balloon. That's exactly right.
9:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So it means you'll float better.
9:14 Speaker 02 There was once a comic where the Earth was attacked by a giant monster, who every time you struck him with an energy beam, got bigger. And they discovered by noticing that his footprints were getting larger but not deeper, that he was actually growing a constant mass but not constant density, just as you say.
9:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because if, had he been getting heavier, the footprint would sink further into the...
9:35 Speaker 02 Exactly, so they found that the way to defeat him was to continually bombard him with energy, until he became so large that his density was less than that of the background of space.
9:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And she just floated away?
9:46 Speaker 02 Exactly right.
9:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That is brilliant!
9:47 Speaker 02 It was an old Fantastic Four comic back in the 80s. So, there are examples like this throughout the history of comic books, where if you just cherry pick, you can find correct applications of physics that you can use for instruction, and then, once you've illustrated the physics principles, you show how the same concepts apply in the real world.
10:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's another clip from my interview with James Kakalios... Kacalios. He's physics professor at University of Minnesota, author of The Physics of Superheroes. That's awesome, Eugene.
10:19 Speaker 01 Yes.
10:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know, just to figure out that you can take a creature and beam him, he'll get bigger but not...
10:27 Speaker 01 And get lighter and float away.
10:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And float away. So you have to be like more clever than the creatures themselves.
10:33 Speaker 01 Yes, it's disappointing to know that you can't shape-shift. I was gonna say it'd be great to shape... or you can, but you'd have to remain the same size.
10:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah.
10:40 Speaker 01 Which defeats, you know, becoming a dragon or something.
10:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You can be a dragon your size.
10:45 Speaker 01 You could be a different... I guess you could look like other people.
10:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's kind of what it is.
10:49 Speaker 01 That's helpful.
10:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's how they've done it. So, you know, they've got things like jet packs, you know, we've seen them from the early clips in the 19...
10:55 Speaker 01 I have one.
10:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Really?
10:57 Speaker 01 I mean...
10:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is that how you got here?
10:59 Speaker 01 I mostly use it indoors. It's actually very dangerous.
11:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you can get one. It costs like a hundred grand.
11:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And they seem really unstable to me.
11:07 Speaker 01 You're gonna do a Kickstarter for a jetpack.
11:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And, and if you, if you troll YouTube, if you troll YouTube videos, first, they all look like people are doing things that'll just kill you. But among the categories of those that might kill you, you've got people testing out jetpacks. And, you know, this was the future we all imagined we'd be living today.
11:26 Speaker 01 Yes, we'd take our Zeppelin and then jump out of it in our jetpack. And then we'd be at work.
11:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Are you disappointed? I mean...
11:32 Speaker 01 I don't know. I don't think I, I mean, I'd like to be able to fly, but I don't think I'd like to fly by setting myself on fire. Or almost.
11:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So there's another side of this we can get to spend some more time on later. There's the mixture of technology and biology that goes on inside the body. The cyborgs, basically. And we can talk more about that later in the show. But before then, I want to also get back to my interview, where we talk about powers that might be kind of mystical.
11:59 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
11:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not necessarily expressions of strength, but of...
12:02 Speaker 01 Magic.
12:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Magic, essentially. And in this clip, we talk about Wonder Woman and some of her mystical powers.
12:10 Speaker 02 Wonder Woman was an Amazon princess, which explained how strong she was. She had a lasso of truth that if she wrapped it around you, compelled you to speak truthfully. Interesting fun fact, Wonder Woman was created by Charles Molson Martin, who was the co-inventor of the polygraph machine.
12:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Really? The polygraph, the lie detector.
12:31 Speaker 02 The co-inventor of the lie detector gave Wonder Woman a lasso of truth. She also had these bracelets with which she would deflect bullets that were fired at her. And then we analyze this from a material science point of view in the physics of superheroes. What are these bracelets made out of that can deflect bullets? And we can calculate the force that a bullet would have on the metal.
12:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In order to not deform the metal.
12:53 Speaker 02 Exactly.
12:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If it hits it.
12:54 Speaker 02 And cold-rolled steel would probably be strong enough.
12:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is that right?
12:58 Speaker 02 So Amazonian metal is apparently nothing fancier than very hard steel.
13:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What they could have had access to, easily.
13:04 Speaker 02 Of course, her wrists don't snap, so she's still excessively strong.
13:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But she's quick enough
13:09 Speaker 02 Exactly.
13:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To aim her bracelet into the path
13:12 Speaker 02 Those reflexes.
13:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Of the bullet.
13:14 Speaker 02 That's exactly right. I'm glad that she's fighting for our rights in her satin tights.
13:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Eugene Mirman. You know, I wonder, so here we have Wonder Woman. Here we have Wonder Woman making you tell the truth by wrapping a lasso around you. But of course, if she was a guy, she would have just pummeled the person.
13:32 Speaker 01 Well, she can do both. She has both a strong and gentle touch.
13:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, that's what it is. That's how you make that happen. Man. So, we're coming up to the end of our first segment. When we come back, we have much more of the physics of superheroes when we return.
14:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back. We're talking about the physics of superheroes with one of my favorite comedians and who's also my co-host, Eugene Mirman. We've been listening to clips of that I, an interview that I conducted with Professor of Physics James Kakalios, author of The Physics of Superheroes. He works out at the University of Minnesota. And in this, this segment, I'm going to bring in, because all of life is not just physics. In fact, life is also-
14:30 Speaker 01 Really? Name one other thing.
14:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I think every now and then you gotta tip your hat to the biology that goes on within life. So, we snared a bio, he was walking around the streets of New York a couple of days ago, and we, we found him. Lee Silver, Professor of Molecular Biology and Public Policy at Princeton University. And he's a specialist in genetics and its impact on human personality. And he's just thought about how, just genetics and technology, and it's actually, he's formally trained in biophysics. So, Lee, welcome to StarTalk Radio.
15:02 Speaker 03 It's good to be here, Neil.
15:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
15:04 Speaker 03 Eugene.
15:04 Speaker 01 Hello.
15:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, you're here, you're gonna just jump in whenever we say something either incredible or credible?
15:09 Speaker 03 Sounds great.
15:11 Speaker 01 Could you make a genetic potion that I could drink and become magic?
15:16 Speaker 02 Well, I think everybody wants a genetic potion that's gonna make him attractive to women.
15:21 Speaker 01 No, I won't. Yeah, I don't want that. I want to be able to fly or jump like to the second story. Like, I don't even need to leap the whole building.
15:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's pretty modest of a request. Yeah, give me the powers to jump 20 feet in the air, you know?
15:35 Speaker 01 Into a building. I don't even mind hitting it if I'm okay.
15:37 Speaker 02 Well, not at our weight, that's the problem.
15:40 Speaker 01 Right.
15:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So what I like are those superheroes that they started out normal and then something happened to them and then they have some new biological power. And I think the most famous in recent times, based on the popularity of the movies, is the Spider-Man series. Spider-Man. And so I had to talk to my man about Spider-Man and find just what he says about him. Because what a unique set of properties this guy has. And let's find out what he tells us.
16:05 Speaker 02 In the 2002 film Spider-Man, Sam Raimi decided that having Peter Parker make his own webs technologically seemed a bit far-fetched. And so he had the webs come out of his wrist because he didn't want it to come out of any other body parts that spiders normally extrude their webbing.
16:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Like out their butt or something, right?
16:24 Speaker 02 Yes.
16:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That would be a different movie, wouldn't it?
16:28 Speaker 02 It would be a different movie, but it might be hard to get it rated PG. But spider web itself is an amazing material. It has a strength, a tensile strength, the strength against being pulled apart, five times greater than steel cable, and it's stretchier than nylon.
16:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So it's flexible steel?
16:45 Speaker 02 It is extremely flexible steel.
16:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you had a steel thread as thin as a spider web, the spider web would be better than it by fact, it's five times stronger.
16:54 Speaker 02 Correct. And scientists would dearly love to be able to artificially produce this because then they could make lightweight clothing that would be stronger than Kevlar. There's all sorts of applications and things that we could do if we could mass produce this at will.
17:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But Spidey...
17:09 Speaker 02 Spidey is able to do this on his own.
17:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On his own.
17:11 Speaker 02 He's able to do it, but it lacks a commercial aspect because it dissolves after an hour.
17:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Otherwise, the city would just be full of this stuff.
17:19 Speaker 02 Full of webbing everywhere.
17:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You can't get rid of it, right? Why do you throw it away?
17:23 Speaker 02 You come out of the subway and instead of being covered in soot, the way you are now, you'd be covered with spider webs. And so, there's some fascinating science about little nano-crystals that provide strength and redundancy, connected by flexible long-chain polymers that provide the stretchiness.
17:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So polymer, like nylon is a polymer, as an example?
17:43 Speaker 02 Correct. Long-chain carbon molecules, right.
17:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. Because carbon likes attaching to itself.
17:48 Speaker 02 Exactly.
17:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you're saying that the spider web is a polymer? Is that what you're saying?
17:53 Speaker 02 It's a polymer that every given length has a very rigid, strong nano-crystalline block that's connected there.
18:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, so it's in segments?
18:02 Speaker 02 Exactly. And the nano-crystallites provide great strength, and the long-chain polymers provide the stretchiness.
18:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's something like the lost biblical tribe, the nano-crystallites. That's what that sounds like. We are the nano-crystallites.
18:17 Speaker 02 They were lost because they were so small. We couldn't see them.
18:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, let me ask you. Lee.
18:24 Speaker 03 Yes.
18:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Our molecular biologist at large, do you think that because we have greater sort of access to the, or at least, the future is a little closer today regarding molecular genetic engineering, do you think these superheroes are more realistic to us, those that have these sort of, these genetic alterations that are within them?
18:43 Speaker 03 Well, we understand what spider webs are made out of, these special proteins that evolved in these little insects to allow them to walk around in thin air, apparently. Our problem is, is that our weight, just our basic weight is too high to develop a material that would do that. But we could probably secrete spider webs for whatever it would be worth.
19:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, wait.
19:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, do you have a plan for your next experiments? Humans secreting spider... What you're saying is a spider is, however strong the spider web is, it's certainly strong enough for a spider. But it'd have to be much, much thicker to hold up a human being, is what you're saying.
19:25 Speaker 03 To hold up you or me, it would have to be much, much thicker. And then it wouldn't be a spider web.
19:28 Speaker 01 Spider man does admittedly have significantly thicker webs.
19:31 Speaker 03 Yes.
19:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Admittedly.
19:33 Speaker 01 So are you saying that's realistic?
19:38 Speaker 03 We could make this stuff. Actually, it's a physicist about to tell me whether or not it could hold heavy weight.
19:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What you're saying is, since some biological creatures in the world can make spider webs, in principle, there's nothing that prevents humans from acquiring that same talent.
19:50 Speaker 03 Exactly. And, in fact, anything that any biological creature does that is special could, in theory, be incorporated into a human being.
20:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, for example, Daredevil can see the world in sound reflections, because he's blind.
20:05 Speaker 03 Right.
20:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And he can see the world, and, of course, bats do that.
20:07 Speaker 03 Exactly.
20:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So he'd make a good bat.
20:09 Speaker 03 Right. And in theory, we could create that kind of phenomenon in man, although our ears would have to be very, very large.
20:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Now, there are other features of superheroes that are really kinda unrealistic in the world of what is real and unreal among superheroes, like elasticity, like, you know, Plastic Man and all this.
20:31 Speaker 03 Well, I actually wanted to say something about the elasticity. That's not totally unrealistic to a small degree. There are actually people who have elastic skin.
20:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I've seen that. Ooh, they're creepy people.
20:42 Speaker 01 But can they reach their arm across a room to get a soda pop?
20:46 Speaker 03 Not that elastic.
20:47 Speaker 01 Not that elastic. Yeah, and can they turn their entire body into like a trash can that flew you on the street?
20:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or as in, in, in the, what's the Disney movie with the superheroes, the Fantastic?
21:01 Speaker 01 The Incredibles?
21:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The Incredibles, the Incredibles, where Elastigirl becomes a parachute.
21:05 Speaker 01 Exactly.
21:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, see, that'd be useful if you fall out of an airplane.
21:08 Speaker 01 Right.
21:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let's go back to my interview with James Cal- Cal- Cal- I can't get his name right, James Calalius, because he talks about these stretching talents that superheroes have.
21:18 Speaker 02 You have Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four.
21:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Remind me, what could he do with his body?
21:22 Speaker 02 He could stretch it into any shape. He had elastic powers. He had same powers as Plastic Man. Plastic Man stretches his body into any shape. At one point, in one of the comics, one of the writers analyzed this and figured that these characters must not have any internal organs, because the thought of what might happen to their cheeseburger that they ate at lunch while they were stretching into all sorts of different shapes led to too disturbing an image.
21:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, did you try to analyze the physics of the stretching?
21:50 Speaker 02 Well, you know, the stretching, again, I will grant them suspension of disbelief.
21:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? By the way, skin is a little bit stretchy, right?
21:56 Speaker 02 It is absolutely.
21:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Look at a pregnant woman, this skin.
21:58 Speaker 02 It is absolutely stretchy. One aspect of the stretching that they get right, at least in the Fantastic Four, is that the further Mr. Fantastic would stretch his arms, the weaker he'd become.
22:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh.
22:09 Speaker 02 And so there, again, you know that if you-
22:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, and, isn't it true that his arm would get thinner?
22:13 Speaker 02 It would have to.
22:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Like Gumby, if you stretch Gumby, you got skits thinner.
22:16 Speaker 02 That's exactly right. And so, what would happen is, you know that if you have a board supported on two posts, and it's only a foot apart, the board is fine, but if the posts are a mile apart, the long plank is gonna sag.
22:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's gonna sag.
22:29 Speaker 02 Due to gravity. And so that the strength is determined by the cross-sectional area.
22:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So the cross-sectional area is if you were to cut it and look at what faces you, like you're cutting an orange.
22:38 Speaker 02 Exactly.
22:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so as he stretches it out, the cross-sectional area gets littler and littler and littler, and you're losing strength.
22:43 Speaker 02 And it gets weaker and weaker because the strength of your muscles is determined by the cross-sectional area.
22:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's why skinny people aren't as strong as people with big muscles.
22:50 Speaker 02 That's exactly right. And in fact, the big muscles, what matters is how fat the muscle is, how large the cross-sectional area, not how long it is.
22:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, right.
23:00 Speaker 02 If you wanna hold up a forty-pound fish with a twenty-pound line, you don't get a longer line, you get a fatter line.
23:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, a stronger line.
23:07 Speaker 02 Exactly. Well, it's stronger because it's thicker.
23:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because it's thicker. So who else stretched?
23:11 Speaker 02 In The Incredibles had Elastic Woman. Another stretching character was the Elongated Man.
23:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That doesn't sound very creative.
23:18 Speaker 02 Well, there was one character who was super strong, and he had a code name called Strong Guy.
23:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, Eugene, we were chatting earlier, you would seem to be intrigued by some of these cases of genetic mutants among humans that we already have on the record books. For example, there was Uber Baby, where in 1999, a baby was born in Germany with a, it was a mutation that changed the way the body controlled muscle growth. And so, we've seen this in cattle before, where they have double muscle cattle. But this baby, apparently, was then born with super muscles.
23:50 Speaker 01 So, my question is, how strong is this baby? Like, could the baby, like, if the baby fought a bear, would the baby win?
23:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or could the baby help you change your car tire?
24:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly. Could it throw a car? Can this baby throw a car?
24:05 Speaker 03 The baby could lift itself up at a very early age.
24:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Could do chin-ups, you're saying.
24:09 Speaker 01 That is such a boring power! A baby that could lift itself before another baby normally? Could it, well realistically, what could this, so the baby's now like four or so, what could it?
24:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So it could do chin ups and pushups, you know, we need more than that if it's gonna be a superpower baby.
24:25 Speaker 01 Can it break sheet rock?
24:26 Speaker 02 It could, it may be able to win some Olympic events.
24:29 Speaker 01 Okay. Okay. Against other babies or against adults?
24:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When we come back, we're gonna talk about Superman. Lots of physics going on there. We'll see you in a moment.
25:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Startalk Radio, we're talking about superheroes in this special episode. If you're gonna be a superhero, you gotta have strength. So let's get back briefly to my interview with James Kakalios and talk about the strength of superheroes and where that comes from and where it's going.
25:19 Speaker 02 Clearly you have the Hulk, you have Superman, you have Thor, in some cases you have Spider-Man, people who don't seem to have very large muscles and yet are extremely strong.
25:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They got away with that one because they said a spider has high strength relative to its legs.
25:34 Speaker 02 Yes. The other side of strength is when you look at characters that who can shrink and still be able to punch with like the same force as a normal person.
25:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Who would that be?
25:45 Speaker 02 Well, Ant-Man.
25:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, I missed that round of comics. Ant-Man?
25:50 Speaker 02 Ant-Man, there was a character-
25:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Who thought this up?
25:52 Speaker 02 Stan Lee.
25:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ant-Man?
25:55 Speaker 02 Ant-Man who could shrink down to the size of an ant.
25:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, and then have the strength ratio that ants have, that must be it.
26:00 Speaker 02 Well-
26:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Cause ants, you seen ants hauling sandwiches off your picnic? Not a whole sandwich, but you seen an ant pull an entire potato chip down the alley.
26:09 Speaker 02 Yes, absolutely. Of course ants do this in a very different way. They have an exoskeleton, they have their structure-
26:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So they're juicy on the inside and solid on the outside.
26:17 Speaker 02 Exactly. They're constructed in a very unique way, which shrinking a person down to the size of an ant wouldn't necessarily buy you.
26:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so Ant-Man, they gave him great strength.
26:26 Speaker 02 They gave him strength, but-
26:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But informed by the biology of an ant.
26:30 Speaker 02 The other thing is if you look at it, sometimes he's able to do things that aren't that far off. His muscles are much weaker when he's the size of an ant. But then his fists have a smaller surface area. So the force per area that he can actually provide.
26:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That would be the pressure.
26:46 Speaker 02 The pressure would be exactly the same as the pressure that he would provide when he was normal size.
26:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
26:52 Speaker 02 So he's able to say punch his way out of a paper bag. Which believe it or not, turned out to be a crucial plot point.
26:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh wow, okay.
27:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I think James Cacali knows way too much about superheroes.
27:05 Speaker 01 He does know quite a bit. I feel like I know a fair amount, but he knows both the science and the stories dating back for 30 years.
27:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We'd all have to agree that the most important superhero out there is Superman. He's strong, he can fly, he's got all the stuff you really need.
27:17 Speaker 01 He shoots lasers out of his face. He's very good at being a superhero.
27:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The man can do it. And so I had a special sort of interview segment with author of The Physics of Superheroes, James Cacali. So let's get right back into that interview. And have him see what he says about Superman himself. So could you use physics principles to rate who the best superheroes are in terms of their power? I think it's gotta be Superman.
27:40 Speaker 02 Well Superman practically violates every law of physics. He not only is able to ignore gravity, but apparently can push against something when he needs to accelerate while he's flying. So there's.
27:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He can just be floating in midair at some speed and then go faster.
27:54 Speaker 02 Exactly right.
27:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Without any propulsion.
27:56 Speaker 02 There's an acceleration, but no force. And so.
27:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so that violates every known law of motion.
28:02 Speaker 02 Yes. Right from there.
28:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, so does having bullets bounce off your flesh.
28:06 Speaker 02 You know, in the early days of Superman, he got his strength and his powers from coming from a planet with a larger gravity than Earth. So he was limited in the things he could do.
28:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let me ask you, could he fly on krypton?
28:17 Speaker 02 No, because on krypton.
28:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That was the heavy gravity.
28:21 Speaker 02 That was the heavy gravity. So just as our muscles and skeleton structure are adapted to Earth's gravity, so when we go to the moon.
28:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're not quite flying, but we're doing pretty good.
28:29 Speaker 02 We can leap a moon building in a single bound and lift moon cars over our heads that astonish the moon people. Superman is able to do the same on Earth. Superman, apparently the rods and cones in his eye not only can detect X-rays. Which is not really useful for us because there's so little X-rays in the solar spectrum that if we could see in the X-ray portion of the spectrum, we'd be constantly bumping into things. But he can emit X-rays also, apparently.
28:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Beam them out of his head.
28:57 Speaker 02 In his eyes. They pass through certain amounts of material, but not others. Then it reflected back and enabled him to see.
29:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know what got me, and I don't know if I was just being too geeky, in the original Superman movie?
29:10 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
29:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The one with Christopher Reeve.
29:12 Speaker 02 Right.
29:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He's up, being interviewed by Lois Lane in her penthouse apartment.
29:16 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
29:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And she says, "You have X-ray vision? What color underwear am I wearing?" He says, "Oh, I can't, I don't know." "So, so you don't have..." "No, because she's standing behind a lead planter."
29:25 Speaker 02 I know.
29:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right? So then, she drifts away.
29:28 Speaker 02 Right.
29:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And he says, "Pink," or something. I forgot the exact color.
29:31 Speaker 02 Yes, it is pink.
29:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It is pink. Oh, so you knew. You remember?
29:33 Speaker 02 (laughing)
29:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you get the geek prize for this one.
29:37 Speaker 02 (laughing)
29:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, if he has X-rays, how's X-ray gonna... It's not gonna see the collar of her panties.
29:42 Speaker 02 No, that's...
29:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The X-rays would go right through the panties.
29:44 Speaker 02 Exactly right. He could maybe basically check out her pelvic bone.
29:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Her pelvic bone, the marrow in her pelvic bone.
29:50 Speaker 02 Right. And the other notion that lead, and only lead, blocks his X-ray vision. X-rays scatter off of atoms depending on how many electrons they have, and the larger the atomic number of the atom, the more electrons. So gold would also be a good scatterer, you know, titanium.
30:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So those big elements that are on the periodic table.
30:07 Speaker 02 Exactly.
30:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You don't just need lead.
30:08 Speaker 02 We use lead for shielding, because when we used gold for shielding, they kept evaporating. It disappeared overnight. And so, you had to use something that was cheap and heavy.
30:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When you say evaporating, you mean culturally evaporating?
30:21 Speaker 02 Yes.
30:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? People said, "Oh, I'd like some of this gold."
30:24 Speaker 02 Well, you come in the next morning and it's gone.
30:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's gone. There it is, the full analysis of Superman. So, Eugene, I... This combination of talents that we some way accept as kinda realistic and...
30:39 Speaker 01 Well, earlier when he was talking about how he was like, "Well, elongated man and Mr. Plastic, like, that's... Or Plastic Man, that's, uh, that's unrealistic, but..." That's like somehow more unrealistic than Superman?
30:50 Speaker 03 Well, well, actually, I could imagine seeing pink panties, believe it or not. Uh, if you know what the pigment is that creates the color pink and different pigments have.
30:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so you've been thinking about this ever since you've seen the movie.
31:03 Speaker 01 So how can you tell if something is pink with that?
31:05 Speaker 03 Well, you have to, you have to know what pigments they use.
31:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, different pigments would have different sort of atomic.
31:10 Speaker 03 Right.
31:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Properties.
31:10 Speaker 01 Oh, I see. You would know the atomic properties of the underwear and then you'd go, that's pink. That is a very smart alien.
31:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, you would know the atomic properties of the pigment that colored the panties.
31:20 Speaker 01 Oh, I see.
31:20 Speaker 03 Yes, exactly.
31:21 Speaker 01 I see.
31:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So in principle.
31:23 Speaker 03 In principle, you.
31:24 Speaker 01 I'm glad you, you figured out how it would be realistic.
31:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, Lee, uh, is that what you do in your Princeton labs?
31:30 Speaker 03 I'd be fired if I did that, no. Um, and the other thing is, is that, you know, the idea of creating X-rays, so there are animals that not, uh, don't create X-rays, but they create life, fireflies.
31:40 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
31:41 Speaker 03 So in theory, we can create it.
31:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, so fireflies, uh, their, their light source is, um, it, it has like UV, right? There's UV in it, but not X-rays.
31:51 Speaker 03 No, no, no, no, not X-rays, but, but other kinds of photons.
31:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, so you mean light that's outside of our visible spectrum? And so if that's impossible in principle.
31:59 Speaker 03 Yeah, and even in, I mean, it's all photons, it's just.
32:02 Speaker 01 So what we're saying is it is realistic to have echolocation, shoot spider webs, maybe even create a very bright light out of your face.
32:10 Speaker 03 Right.
32:10 Speaker 01 And, and be Batman. This is not bad. The fact, and be super humanly strong if you can be born with double muscles or remove the gene or.
32:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Lee, Lee Silver, you're a professor of molecular biology, Princeton University, and it sounds like you've, you, you're a fan of all the various, uh, physical properties that the animal kingdom possesses. And are you after?
32:33 Speaker 03 Absolutely.
32:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Are you after the genetic code of what enables this? And one day you want to splice that into humans and create a superhuman? Is this what you're doing in your lab?
32:40 Speaker 03 Uh, it's all in my imagination. I mean, you know, as I said, anything in biology is possible. It's fun to think about.
32:47 Speaker 01 If I came by Princeton, could you give me wings?
32:51 Speaker 03 Well, they're flying squirrels, you know? Not wings, but webs and their arms.
32:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, there's another, there's another superhero property, invisibility. Even Harry Potter can do this with his special cloak.
33:02 Speaker 01 Well, he's magic.
33:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's magic, that's different. So I, I had to get some, get to the bottom line on this invisibility stuff. So let's go back to my interview with James and find out what he says about this special superhero property.
33:13 Speaker 02 There's the Invisible Woman, there's many characters who can turn invisible. One interesting question is, when they're invisible, how are they still able to see? Because if light is passing through their body and not interacting, or bending around their body-
33:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It'd be visible light.
33:26 Speaker 02 Visible light, yes, exactly right.
33:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you could see with radio waves, we'd be completely invisible. Because radio waves can pass through your body.
33:32 Speaker 02 Absolutely, and in fact, this is how I think that the Invisible Woman can see.
33:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You've analyzed this.
33:38 Speaker 02 I've thought about this much more than I probably should. The reason we could see anything is that the atoms and molecules in our body absorb and then re-emmit light in the visible portion of the spectrum.
33:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
33:50 Speaker 02 If she's able to shift that transition point into the ultraviolet portion of the spectrum-
33:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm.
33:56 Speaker 02 Then the visible light would pass through, the same way the visible light passes through-
34:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A glass.
34:01 Speaker 02 A window.
34:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, a window, sure.
34:02 Speaker 02 Exactly, right? But ultraviolet light would now be absorbed.
34:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
34:06 Speaker 02 And so presumably, if this is how she turns invisible, then she's blind to visible light, but can see the ultraviolet light that is still present in significant quantity.
34:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So that must be how she does it.
34:18 Speaker 02 The next time I see her- But of course, the question is, when is the next time you see the Invisible Woman?
34:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, in modern times, there are actually ways of becoming invisible.
34:30 Speaker 02 Yeah.
34:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, for example, glass is fundamentally invisible.
34:33 Speaker 02 Right.
34:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right? That's why we make windows out of it. So, this notion of being invisible is not so foreign.
34:38 Speaker 02 Right.
34:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's not so technologically out of touch with our capacity to understand.
34:43 Speaker 02 Right.
34:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In fact, your building is invisible to radio waves and most microwaves. That's why your cellphone can ring indoors and annoy performers on stage. Cellphones don't see the walls. Cellphones raise the microwave, they just pass right on through.
34:57 Speaker 02 I feel like this has given me a lot of hope for becoming a superhero. I feel like, well, if I could figure out a way to turn to glass-
35:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or, so what they're working on now is a kind of material where the light enters, it hits your front, but then gets passed around the side of you and comes out coherently on the other side. So if you're looking at that beam of light, it, you'd never knew that it actually went around your body girth to get to you. And as, as far as you're concerned, you're seeing straight through you.
35:23 Speaker 03 But you have to be really narrow for that to work.
35:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, it depends on how good the optics is in the, in the curved light properties of what, of, of, of the material that they put together. We've got to take a quick break, but more StarTalk when we return.
36:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is StarTalk Radio. Welcome back. So did you, so do you want a cape?
36:04 Speaker 01 I do. Well, here's the thing about a cape. It's one of the only things I can definitely do that a superhero has. Like, I don't.
36:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Don a cape.
36:12 Speaker 01 I can put on a cape. I can't have claws. Can I have claws? Can I have claws come out of my hand?
36:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? According, according to Lee, any other creature on earth that has claws, he can hook you up with one one day with genetically engineered.
36:22 Speaker 01 Can some come out of my hands?
36:23 Speaker 03 We could put tissue on that does that, sure.
36:26 Speaker 01 Tissue?
36:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not Kleenex.
36:27 Speaker 01 Oh, oh, oh.
36:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He's a biologist.
36:29 Speaker 03 Biological tissue, sure, that grows claws.
36:32 Speaker 01 Great, I can have, well, so basically, first step, I can get a cape. And I can be fireproof.
36:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We, we've, we've actually done some research on capes.
36:42 Speaker 01 Oh.
36:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, movies have. And so Ed, there's no better expert than Edna on capes. You know Edna?
36:48 Speaker 01 Yes.
36:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You do?
36:49 Speaker 01 Incredible.
36:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, here she goes. Let's find out what she tells us about capes and superhero powers.
36:53 Speaker 04 Something classic, like Dyna Guy. Oh, he had a great look. Oh, the cape and the boots.
37:00 Speaker 05 No capes.
37:01 Speaker 04 Isn't that my decision?
37:02 Speaker 05 Do you remember Thunderhead? Tall, storm powers, nice man, good with cakes.
37:07 Speaker 04 Listen.
37:08 Speaker 05 November 15th of 58. All was well, another day saved, when his cape snagged on a missile.
37:17 Speaker 04 Thunderhead was not the brightest ball.
37:19 Speaker 05 Strato Gale, April 23rd, 57, cape caught in a jet turbine.
37:25 Speaker 04 You can't generalize about this thing.
37:27 Speaker 05 Metaman, express elevator. Dyna guy, snag on takeoff. Splashdown, sucked into a vortex. Knock it.
37:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Capes are bad, Eugene.
37:36 Speaker 01 Hey, can, is, are, are there capes that can make you invisible?
37:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, vis, well, I, not, oh, oh, you mean, are there in the government?
37:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, has the, yeah, has the government, government made stuff that can make people seem invisible?
37:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm not authorized to answer that question. Next.
37:50 Speaker 01 Um, are there invisible tanks? What's invisible?
37:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm not authorized.
37:54 Speaker 01 What exists that's sort of invisible?
37:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Invisible airplanes. Uh, I, I don't know, Eugene. I, I, I don't know.
38:00 Speaker 01 You made me ask you. I asked you earlier and you said, "Ask me on air." Now I asked you and you're like, "I don't know." To embarrass me.
38:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I am not authorized to divulge that information.
38:11 Speaker 01 All right.
38:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? My access to top secret.
38:13 Speaker 01 Information. So there might be invisible capes and invisible tanks, and there might not, which is what I already knew.
38:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The question is, if I knew about one, would I tell you? That's the real question.
38:24 Speaker 01 Would you not just tell me? Would you tell the world?
38:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. You know what else we've got going there? There's like people who change the temperature of things. That's kinda weird.
38:32 Speaker 01 Yes, oven man.
38:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Of, of the, let's go back to my, my, the final clip of my interview with James Kakalios, author of The Physics of Superheroes. Just see what he says about ice. Find out. We have Frozone. How does he do that?
38:46 Speaker 02 Right. Also, there's a character, the X-Men, Iceman. They have ice powers, and it's described by their being able to change the local temperature around them, so that what they're just doing is then freezing the water vapor that is present anyway. And so, they're not creating ice.
39:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's how they can make these crystals there.
39:04 Speaker 02 They're not creating ice, they're lowering the temperature around them.
39:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So whatever's there freezes in place.
39:09 Speaker 02 Exactly right. So if you put them out in, say, the desert, their powers would be greatly reduced.
39:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because there's not much moisture in the desert.
39:16 Speaker 02 Exactly right.
39:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And frozen sand is not that interesting.
39:18 Speaker 02 No, it is. Of course, there was Iceman and even Frozone would sometimes make these ice ramps that they would, you know, skate up. And frequently, the ramps would be supported on the ground and then they would become very long and the character would be out at the end, way beyond the center of mass of the ramp. And in one comic, Iceman, in an informational page to the readers, said, "Did I just hear a wise guy physics major ask what's keeping this up?"
39:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What?
39:47 Speaker 02 Yep.
39:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He's talking to you.
39:49 Speaker 02 He was talking to me and he gave an answer I cannot argue with. Imagination.
39:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, that's a cop-out. Oh, my god. So, there it is, Eugene. Imagination makes it all happen. And James, in your biophysics labs, what role does, I mean, Lee, in your biophysics labs, what imagination, what role does that play?
40:09 Speaker 03 Imagination's everything.
40:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's everything.
40:11 Speaker 03 You have to imagine things before you can discover them in what exists.
40:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Spoken like a true scientist on the frontier. Right? Not doing just what everyone else has done.
40:20 Speaker 01 Science is art.
40:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Stepping where no one has stepped before. You know, this superhero concept has worked its way into culture and there are people, there are reports of bands of people donning masks and capes and tights, trying to stop crime in various cities. There's one that caught my attention in Seattle, quote, "superhero by the name of Phoenix Jones, prevented a carjacking in January of this year." Complete with, like, you know, he's got a mask, he's got tights, and he's one of, like, eight members of the Rain City superhero movement. What does that even mean?
40:54 Speaker 01 Are they, do they work in conjunction with the police there? Or are they wanted like Batman?
40:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, you have to be wanted, otherwise it's not sexy, you know?
41:02 Speaker 01 Well, what point does that turn into, like, being a vigilante?
41:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To be creepy vigilante.
41:07 Speaker 03 And there's a turf battle there between the police and the vigilantes.
41:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, yeah, I guess on some level, we like the idea of superheroes protecting us, having special powers. I happen to really like the movie Invincible, no, in...
41:20 Speaker 01 With Mr. Glass or something?
41:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, what was the name?
41:25 Speaker 01 Train.
41:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The train. The train.
41:28 Speaker 01 I forget.
41:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It had Bruce Willis in it.
41:30 Speaker 01 It did, it did, and he was, he was sort of magic.
41:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Invincible, unbreakable. There we go. Unbreakable, like that one. Cause he was just a strong.
41:37 Speaker 01 So many people listening going, unbreakable. But I'm glad we got to it.
41:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Trying to slap me through the, the radio waves there. So, yeah, you know, I, I, as a kid, I wanted to be a superhero. I felt the, the urge to want to save people who were disenfranchised or taken advantage of. And I didn't know if that was just me or other people. It had to be plenty of people because the genre is hugely popular.
41:58 Speaker 01 Right.
41:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it's fun to think about the science of it.
42:00 Speaker 01 I think it's fun to be helpful, but it's also fun to be magic.
42:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
42:05 Speaker 01 So like, part of it is I'd love to help people, but mostly I'd be able, like to be able to jump from one building to another and be like, that worked.
42:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you want to have superpowers, but not actually save anybody?
42:15 Speaker 01 I would totally, if I had superpowers, save people, but I bet it would be an exhausting responsibility. That's what they don't say in Spider-Man.
42:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We've got to wind down. Eugene, I want to thank you for coming back on the StarTalk Radio. You, you do great comedic work. And Lee, thanks for coming on the show. Oh, you're very welcome. Biologist at large. We have to make, call you again one time. Sure.
42:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
42:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, and as always, I bid you to keep looking up.
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