The Physics of Superheroes

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.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:15Neil 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?

• 0:43Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  It's great to be back.

• 0:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I couldn't do this segment without you, you know.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 0:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I knew you'd have something to say about every one of these things.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  I do. I have an opinion about all of it. I even brought a ring powered by willpower.

• 0:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that right?

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 0:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know someone named Will Power?

• 0:58Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Eugene, do you have some favorite superheroes?

• 1:03Speaker 01

  Um, one, all of them.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's a cop-out answer. Come on now.

• 1:08Speaker 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.

• 1:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's with all the green? There's like Green Hornet, and you know, what's with the green?

• 1:23Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  It was not of my design.

• 1:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So the Green Lantern, what else? Anybody else?

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Batman, because he's like Mr. T. He's like mean to criminals but really nice to children.

• 1:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except, he's got a cape, but he can't fly. I never quite understood that.

• 1:41Speaker 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.

• 1:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it helps that he's a billionaire and can build whatever he wants.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  And very mad. He's super angry.

• 1:56Neil 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.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Maybe we won't stop. Maybe at the end of the hour, we will just keep recording.

• 2:17Neil 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.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  It's a very pretty name.

• 2:30Neil 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?

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Well, I could guess really accurately, or do you want me to ask? Because it's Gotham Publishing.

• 2:48Neil 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.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 3:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Flash goes really fast through the atmosphere, but that could be bad, if you don't have, like, heat shields and things.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, he is, he breaks the speed force.

• 3:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let's find out.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  From the point of view of teaching physics, the Flash, who can run at super speed, is a great character.

• 3:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How fast does the Flash run?

• 3:26Speaker 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.

• 3:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, they're invoking some relativity there.

• 3:40Speaker 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.

• 3:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What accounts for Flash's speed? I don't remember.

• 3:55Speaker 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.

• 4:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And rather than dying.

• 4:08Speaker 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.

• 4:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you're saying is you can't accelerate faster than gravity allows you to.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Correct, yes.

• 4:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  Now you also need to be able to overcome air resistance.

• 4:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wouldn't some of them just burn up moving through the air that fast?

• 4:44Speaker 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.

• 4:56Neil 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.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  Absolutely. That's right. Pushing the air out of the way.

• 5:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At least they thought about that problem.

• 5:05Speaker 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.

• 5:16Neil 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.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's true.

• 5:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, so you know about.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  But meteorites can't access the speed force, so there's the flaw there.

• 5:32Neil 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.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Really?

• 5:40Neil 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.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  Straight.

• 6:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Straight.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  I do.

• 6:02Neil 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.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 6:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't that beautiful?

• 6:31Speaker 01

  That is really pretty.

• 6:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so if you like the, you said before the clip that you like the green.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Lantern.

• 6:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lantern. But, but if you had your own superheroes, what do you, your own superpowers, what do you think you'd want?

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Um, well, uh.

• 6:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So clearly you haven't thought about this.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Well, I can't.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 6:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought every guy has thought this through completely.

• 6:52Speaker 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.

• 7:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To move stuff at a distance.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, with your mind, it'd, it'd be mostly very convenient, so.

• 7:24Neil 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.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  So cape realistic, telekinesis, meh.

• 7:34Neil 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.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  Okay, I often say Batman because he doesn't have any powers. Of course, the number of times.

• 7:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And of course, he can't fly.

• 7:51Speaker 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.

• 8:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would have thought that behaving that way from the beginning was evidence of brain damage.

• 8:07Speaker 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.

• 8:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but that's just a power supply we haven't perfected yet.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  Well, in the movie, the 2008 movie, Iron Man, he has a power.

• 8:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's with the Robert Downey Jr.

• 8:32Speaker 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.

• 8:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a good point. Who's the most unrealistic superhero? Is it Elastic Man or something?

• 8:48Speaker 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.

• 8:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, they're not getting just less dense?

• 8:58Speaker 02

  Well, that's an excellent point, and there's a beautiful illustration of this.

• 9:02Neil 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.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Yes, you inflated like in a balloon. That's exactly right.

• 9:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it means you'll float better.

• 9:14Speaker 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.

• 9:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because if, had he been getting heavier, the footprint would sink further into the...

• 9:35Speaker 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.

• 9:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And she just floated away?

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Exactly right.

• 9:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is brilliant!

• 9:47Speaker 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.

• 10:09Neil 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.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, just to figure out that you can take a creature and beam him, he'll get bigger but not...

• 10:27Speaker 01

  And get lighter and float away.

• 10:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And float away. So you have to be like more clever than the creatures themselves.

• 10:33Speaker 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.

• 10:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Which defeats, you know, becoming a dragon or something.

• 10:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can be a dragon your size.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  You could be a different... I guess you could look like other people.

• 10:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's kind of what it is.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  That's helpful.

• 10:50Neil 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...

• 10:55Speaker 01

  I have one.

• 10:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 10:57Speaker 01

  I mean...

• 10:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that how you got here?

• 10:59Speaker 01

  I mostly use it indoors. It's actually very dangerous.

• 11:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you can get one. It costs like a hundred grand.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they seem really unstable to me.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  You're gonna do a Kickstarter for a jetpack.

• 11:09Neil 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.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  Yes, we'd take our Zeppelin and then jump out of it in our jetpack. And then we'd be at work.

• 11:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you disappointed? I mean...

• 11:32Speaker 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.

• 11:40Neil 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.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not necessarily expressions of strength, but of...

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Magic.

• 12:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Magic, essentially. And in this clip, we talk about Wonder Woman and some of her mystical powers.

• 12:10Speaker 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.

• 12:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really? The polygraph, the lie detector.

• 12:31Speaker 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.

• 12:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In order to not deform the metal.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 12:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it hits it.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  And cold-rolled steel would probably be strong enough.

• 12:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that right?

• 12:58Speaker 02

  So Amazonian metal is apparently nothing fancier than very hard steel.

• 13:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What they could have had access to, easily.

• 13:04Speaker 02

  Of course, her wrists don't snap, so she's still excessively strong.

• 13:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But she's quick enough

• 13:09Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 13:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To aim her bracelet into the path

• 13:12Speaker 02

  Those reflexes.

• 13:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of the bullet.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. I'm glad that she's fighting for our rights in her satin tights.

• 13:21Neil 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.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Well, she can do both. She has both a strong and gentle touch.

• 13:36Neil 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.

• 14:06Neil 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-

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Really? Name one other thing.

• 14:33Neil 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.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  It's good to be here, Neil.

• 15:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 15:04Speaker 03

  Eugene.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 15:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you're here, you're gonna just jump in whenever we say something either incredible or credible?

• 15:09Speaker 03

  Sounds great.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Could you make a genetic potion that I could drink and become magic?

• 15:16Speaker 02

  Well, I think everybody wants a genetic potion that's gonna make him attractive to women.

• 15:21Speaker 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.

• 15:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's pretty modest of a request. Yeah, give me the powers to jump 20 feet in the air, you know?

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Into a building. I don't even mind hitting it if I'm okay.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  Well, not at our weight, that's the problem.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:40Neil 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.

• 16:05Speaker 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.

• 16:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like out their butt or something, right?

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be a different movie, wouldn't it?

• 16:28Speaker 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.

• 16:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's flexible steel?

• 16:45Speaker 02

  It is extremely flexible steel.

• 16:47Neil 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.

• 16:54Speaker 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.

• 17:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Spidey...

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Spidey is able to do this on his own.

• 17:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On his own.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  He's able to do it, but it lacks a commercial aspect because it dissolves after an hour.

• 17:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Otherwise, the city would just be full of this stuff.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  Full of webbing everywhere.

• 17:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't get rid of it, right? Why do you throw it away?

• 17:23Speaker 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.

• 17:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So polymer, like nylon is a polymer, as an example?

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Correct. Long-chain carbon molecules, right.

• 17:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Because carbon likes attaching to itself.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 17:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're saying that the spider web is a polymer? Is that what you're saying?

• 17:53Speaker 02

  It's a polymer that every given length has a very rigid, strong nano-crystalline block that's connected there.

• 18:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so it's in segments?

• 18:02Speaker 02

  Exactly. And the nano-crystallites provide great strength, and the long-chain polymers provide the stretchiness.

• 18:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's something like the lost biblical tribe, the nano-crystallites. That's what that sounds like. We are the nano-crystallites.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  They were lost because they were so small. We couldn't see them.

• 18:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let me ask you. Lee.

• 18:24Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 18:25Neil 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?

• 18:43Speaker 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.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, wait.

• 19:08Neil 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.

• 19:25Speaker 03

  To hold up you or me, it would have to be much, much thicker. And then it wouldn't be a spider web.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Spider man does admittedly have significantly thicker webs.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 19:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Admittedly.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  So are you saying that's realistic?

• 19:38Speaker 03

  We could make this stuff. Actually, it's a physicist about to tell me whether or not it could hold heavy weight.

• 19:44Neil 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.

• 19:50Speaker 03

  Exactly. And, in fact, anything that any biological creature does that is special could, in theory, be incorporated into a human being.

• 20:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, for example, Daredevil can see the world in sound reflections, because he's blind.

• 20:05Speaker 03

  Right.

• 20:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he can see the world, and, of course, bats do that.

• 20:07Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 20:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he'd make a good bat.

• 20:09Speaker 03

  Right. And in theory, we could create that kind of phenomenon in man, although our ears would have to be very, very large.

• 20:17Neil 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.

• 20:31Speaker 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.

• 20:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've seen that. Ooh, they're creepy people.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  But can they reach their arm across a room to get a soda pop?

• 20:46Speaker 03

  Not that elastic.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Not that elastic. Yeah, and can they turn their entire body into like a trash can that flew you on the street?

• 20:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or as in, in, in the, what's the Disney movie with the superheroes, the Fantastic?

• 21:01Speaker 01

  The Incredibles?

• 21:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Incredibles, the Incredibles, where Elastigirl becomes a parachute.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, see, that'd be useful if you fall out of an airplane.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:09Neil 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.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  You have Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four.

• 21:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Remind me, what could he do with his body?

• 21:22Speaker 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.

• 21:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, did you try to analyze the physics of the stretching?

• 21:50Speaker 02

  Well, you know, the stretching, again, I will grant them suspension of disbelief.

• 21:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, skin is a little bit stretchy, right?

• 21:56Speaker 02

  It is absolutely.

• 21:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look at a pregnant woman, this skin.

• 21:58Speaker 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.

• 22:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  And so there, again, you know that if you-

• 22:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, and, isn't it true that his arm would get thinner?

• 22:13Speaker 02

  It would have to.

• 22:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like Gumby, if you stretch Gumby, you got skits thinner.

• 22:16Speaker 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.

• 22:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's gonna sag.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  Due to gravity. And so that the strength is determined by the cross-sectional area.

• 22:33Neil 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.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 22:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so as he stretches it out, the cross-sectional area gets littler and littler and littler, and you're losing strength.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  And it gets weaker and weaker because the strength of your muscles is determined by the cross-sectional area.

• 22:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why skinny people aren't as strong as people with big muscles.

• 22:50Speaker 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.

• 22:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 23:00Speaker 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.

• 23:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, a stronger line.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  Exactly. Well, it's stronger because it's thicker.

• 23:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it's thicker. So who else stretched?

• 23:11Speaker 02

  In The Incredibles had Elastic Woman. Another stretching character was the Elongated Man.

• 23:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That doesn't sound very creative.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  Well, there was one character who was super strong, and he had a code name called Strong Guy.

• 23:23Neil 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.

• 23:50Speaker 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?

• 23:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or could the baby help you change your car tire?

• 24:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Could it throw a car? Can this baby throw a car?

• 24:05Speaker 03

  The baby could lift itself up at a very early age.

• 24:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Could do chin-ups, you're saying.

• 24:09Speaker 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?

• 24:22Neil 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.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Can it break sheet rock?

• 24:26Speaker 02

  It could, it may be able to win some Olympic events.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Okay. Okay. Against other babies or against adults?

• 24:34Neil 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.

• 25:04Neil 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.

• 25:19Speaker 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.

• 25:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They got away with that one because they said a spider has high strength relative to its legs.

• 25:34Speaker 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.

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who would that be?

• 25:45Speaker 02

  Well, Ant-Man.

• 25:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I missed that round of comics. Ant-Man?

• 25:50Speaker 02

  Ant-Man, there was a character-

• 25:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who thought this up?

• 25:52Speaker 02

  Stan Lee.

• 25:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ant-Man?

• 25:55Speaker 02

  Ant-Man who could shrink down to the size of an ant.

• 25:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, and then have the strength ratio that ants have, that must be it.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  Well-

• 26:00Neil 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.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely. Of course ants do this in a very different way. They have an exoskeleton, they have their structure-

• 26:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they're juicy on the inside and solid on the outside.

• 26:17Speaker 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.

• 26:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so Ant-Man, they gave him great strength.

• 26:26Speaker 02

  They gave him strength, but-

• 26:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But informed by the biology of an ant.

• 26:30Speaker 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.

• 26:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be the pressure.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  The pressure would be exactly the same as the pressure that he would provide when he was normal size.

• 26:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 26:52Speaker 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.

• 26:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh wow, okay.

• 27:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think James Cacali knows way too much about superheroes.

• 27:05Speaker 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.

• 27:11Neil 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.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  He shoots lasers out of his face. He's very good at being a superhero.

• 27:20Neil 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.

• 27:40Speaker 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.

• 27:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He can just be floating in midair at some speed and then go faster.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  Exactly right.

• 27:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Without any propulsion.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  There's an acceleration, but no force. And so.

• 27:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that violates every known law of motion.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Yes. Right from there.

• 28:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so does having bullets bounce off your flesh.

• 28:06Speaker 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.

• 28:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me ask you, could he fly on krypton?

• 28:17Speaker 02

  No, because on krypton.

• 28:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was the heavy gravity.

• 28:21Speaker 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.

• 28:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're not quite flying, but we're doing pretty good.

• 28:29Speaker 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.

• 28:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Beam them out of his head.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  In his eyes. They pass through certain amounts of material, but not others. Then it reflected back and enabled him to see.

• 29:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what got me, and I don't know if I was just being too geeky, in the original Superman movie?

• 29:10Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The one with Christopher Reeve.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's up, being interviewed by Lois Lane in her penthouse apartment.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:17Neil 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."

• 29:25Speaker 02

  I know.

• 29:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right? So then, she drifts away.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he says, "Pink," or something. I forgot the exact color.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  Yes, it is pink.

• 29:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is pink. Oh, so you knew. You remember?

• 29:33Speaker 02

  (laughing)

• 29:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you get the geek prize for this one.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  (laughing)

• 29:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, if he has X-rays, how's X-ray gonna... It's not gonna see the collar of her panties.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  No, that's...

• 29:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The X-rays would go right through the panties.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  Exactly right. He could maybe basically check out her pelvic bone.

• 29:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Her pelvic bone, the marrow in her pelvic bone.

• 29:50Speaker 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.

• 30:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So those big elements that are on the periodic table.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 30:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't just need lead.

• 30:08Speaker 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.

• 30:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you say evaporating, you mean culturally evaporating?

• 30:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 30:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People said, "Oh, I'd like some of this gold."

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Well, you come in the next morning and it's gone.

• 30:26Neil 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...

• 30:39Speaker 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?

• 30:50Speaker 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.

• 30:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so you've been thinking about this ever since you've seen the movie.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  So how can you tell if something is pink with that?

• 31:05Speaker 03

  Well, you have to, you have to know what pigments they use.

• 31:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, different pigments would have different sort of atomic.

• 31:10Speaker 03

  Right.

• 31:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Properties.

• 31:10Speaker 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.

• 31:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you would know the atomic properties of the pigment that colored the panties.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Oh, I see.

• 31:20Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  I see.

• 31:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in principle.

• 31:23Speaker 03

  In principle, you.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  I'm glad you, you figured out how it would be realistic.

• 31:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Lee, uh, is that what you do in your Princeton labs?

• 31:30Speaker 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.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 31:41Speaker 03

  So in theory, we can create it.

• 31:42Neil 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.

• 31:51Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no, not X-rays, but, but other kinds of photons.

• 31:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so you mean light that's outside of our visible spectrum? And so if that's impossible in principle.

• 31:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, and even in, I mean, it's all photons, it's just.

• 32:02Speaker 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.

• 32:10Speaker 03

  Right.

• 32:10Speaker 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.

• 32:20Neil 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?

• 32:33Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 32:34Neil 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?

• 32:40Speaker 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.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  If I came by Princeton, could you give me wings?

• 32:51Speaker 03

  Well, they're flying squirrels, you know? Not wings, but webs and their arms.

• 32:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, there's another, there's another superhero property, invisibility. Even Harry Potter can do this with his special cloak.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Well, he's magic.

• 33:03Neil 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.

• 33:13Speaker 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-

• 33:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It'd be visible light.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Visible light, yes, exactly right.

• 33:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you could see with radio waves, we'd be completely invisible. Because radio waves can pass through your body.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  Absolutely, and in fact, this is how I think that the Invisible Woman can see.

• 33:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've analyzed this.

• 33:38Speaker 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.

• 33:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  If she's able to shift that transition point into the ultraviolet portion of the spectrum-

• 33:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  Then the visible light would pass through, the same way the visible light passes through-

• 34:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A glass.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  A window.

• 34:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, a window, sure.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  Exactly, right? But ultraviolet light would now be absorbed.

• 34:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 34:06Speaker 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.

• 34:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that must be how she does it.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  The next time I see her- But of course, the question is, when is the next time you see the Invisible Woman?

• 34:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, in modern times, there are actually ways of becoming invisible.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, for example, glass is fundamentally invisible.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? That's why we make windows out of it. So, this notion of being invisible is not so foreign.

• 34:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not so technologically out of touch with our capacity to understand.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:43Neil 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.

• 34:57Speaker 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-

• 35:04Neil 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.

• 35:23Speaker 03

  But you have to be really narrow for that to work.

• 35:25Neil 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.

• 36:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Radio. Welcome back. So did you, so do you want a cape?

• 36:04Speaker 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.

• 36:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don a cape.

• 36:12Speaker 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?

• 36:16Neil 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.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  Can some come out of my hands?

• 36:23Speaker 03

  We could put tissue on that does that, sure.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Tissue?

• 36:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not Kleenex.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Oh, oh, oh.

• 36:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's a biologist.

• 36:29Speaker 03

  Biological tissue, sure, that grows claws.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Great, I can have, well, so basically, first step, I can get a cape. And I can be fireproof.

• 36:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We, we've, we've actually done some research on capes.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 36:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, movies have. And so Ed, there's no better expert than Edna on capes. You know Edna?

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You do?

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Incredible.

• 36:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, here she goes. Let's find out what she tells us about capes and superhero powers.

• 36:53Speaker 04

  Something classic, like Dyna Guy. Oh, he had a great look. Oh, the cape and the boots.

• 37:00Speaker 05

  No capes.

• 37:01Speaker 04

  Isn't that my decision?

• 37:02Speaker 05

  Do you remember Thunderhead? Tall, storm powers, nice man, good with cakes.

• 37:07Speaker 04

  Listen.

• 37:08Speaker 05

  November 15th of 58. All was well, another day saved, when his cape snagged on a missile.

• 37:17Speaker 04

  Thunderhead was not the brightest ball.

• 37:19Speaker 05

  Strato Gale, April 23rd, 57, cape caught in a jet turbine.

• 37:25Speaker 04

  You can't generalize about this thing.

• 37:27Speaker 05

  Metaman, express elevator. Dyna guy, snag on takeoff. Splashdown, sucked into a vortex. Knock it.

• 37:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Capes are bad, Eugene.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Hey, can, is, are, are there capes that can make you invisible?

• 37:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, vis, well, I, not, oh, oh, you mean, are there in the government?

• 37:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, has the, yeah, has the government, government made stuff that can make people seem invisible?

• 37:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not authorized to answer that question. Next.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Um, are there invisible tanks? What's invisible?

• 37:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not authorized.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  What exists that's sort of invisible?

• 37:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Invisible airplanes. Uh, I, I don't know, Eugene. I, I, I don't know.

• 38:00Speaker 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.

• 38:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I am not authorized to divulge that information.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  All right.

• 38:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My access to top secret.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Information. So there might be invisible capes and invisible tanks, and there might not, which is what I already knew.

• 38:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The question is, if I knew about one, would I tell you? That's the real question.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  Would you not just tell me? Would you tell the world?

• 38:26Neil 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.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Yes, oven man.

• 38:33Neil 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?

• 38:46Speaker 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.

• 39:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how they can make these crystals there.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  They're not creating ice, they're lowering the temperature around them.

• 39:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So whatever's there freezes in place.

• 39:09Speaker 02

  Exactly right. So if you put them out in, say, the desert, their powers would be greatly reduced.

• 39:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because there's not much moisture in the desert.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  Exactly right.

• 39:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And frozen sand is not that interesting.

• 39:18Speaker 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?"

• 39:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 39:47Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 39:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's talking to you.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  He was talking to me and he gave an answer I cannot argue with. Imagination.

• 39:53Neil 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?

• 40:09Speaker 03

  Imagination's everything.

• 40:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's everything.

• 40:11Speaker 03

  You have to imagine things before you can discover them in what exists.

• 40:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Spoken like a true scientist on the frontier. Right? Not doing just what everyone else has done.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Science is art.

• 40:21Neil 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?

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Are they, do they work in conjunction with the police there? Or are they wanted like Batman?

• 40:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you have to be wanted, otherwise it's not sexy, you know?

• 41:02Speaker 01

  Well, what point does that turn into, like, being a vigilante?

• 41:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To be creepy vigilante.

• 41:07Speaker 03

  And there's a turf battle there between the police and the vigilantes.

• 41:11Neil 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...

• 41:20Speaker 01

  With Mr. Glass or something?

• 41:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, what was the name?

• 41:25Speaker 01

  Train.

• 41:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The train. The train.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  I forget.

• 41:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It had Bruce Willis in it.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  It did, it did, and he was, he was sort of magic.

• 41:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Invincible, unbreakable. There we go. Unbreakable, like that one. Cause he was just a strong.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  So many people listening going, unbreakable. But I'm glad we got to it.

• 41:41Neil 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.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's fun to think about the science of it.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  I think it's fun to be helpful, but it's also fun to be magic.

• 42:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 42:05Speaker 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.

• 42:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you want to have superpowers, but not actually save anybody?

• 42:15Speaker 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.

• 42:25Neil 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.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, and as always, I bid you to keep looking up.