Speaker 1: Exitement. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from housetop
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you wasn't a stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Seger,
Speaker 1: and today we're gonna be talking about it Man, the
Speaker 1: famous tiny little superhero who was on the big screen
Speaker 1: over the summer, and about the science behind it miniaturization
Speaker 1: and it's all different kinds of crazy, wacky science things
Speaker 1: that are actually some are true and some are not.
Speaker 1: Before we get into that, though, I want to remind
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Speaker 1: working on the other social media platform called Periscope. We've
Speaker 1: been doing it for about, I guess two months now,
Speaker 1: and we try every Friday at noon Eastern Standard time
Speaker 1: to be available for about twenty or thirty minutes hang
Speaker 1: out with our audience, talk to you about what's going
Speaker 1: on with the show, what we're recording, what we're researching,
Speaker 1: and what we have coming up in the next couple
Speaker 1: of weeks. So, uh, we won't be on We're currently
Speaker 1: recording this right before Christmas, so it's gonna be a
Speaker 1: little bit uh off schedule. But once we get past
Speaker 1: the new year, I think we'll we'll get back onto
Speaker 1: that Friday schedule. All right, well, let's launch into it.
Speaker 1: We're talking about aunt Man. We're talking about aunts, We're
Speaker 1: talking about the possible science of miniaturization. Uh. Aunt Man,
Speaker 1: of course, is the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe movie to
Speaker 1: come out came out here in as of this recording.
Speaker 1: It has just hit the digital streaming market and I
Speaker 1: believe it's it's either out on DVD and Blu Ray
Speaker 1: now or it will be very soon. I believe you
Speaker 1: saw in the theater. I did. I saw it in
Speaker 1: the theater. I'm, as many of our listeners know, a
Speaker 1: huge comic book fan and try to support comic book movies.
Speaker 1: For the most part. I was a little bit on
Speaker 1: the fence about this one, to be honest, but I
Speaker 1: did go see it in the theater. Col I liked it. Okay,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like my favorite or anything, but but the
Speaker 1: science was particularly interesting. Yeah, the science was. I just
Speaker 1: saw it last week and I really enjoyed it. I was.
Speaker 1: I definitely came into it not you know, I wasn't
Speaker 1: certain what to expect because on one hand, I don't
Speaker 1: have any real attachment to Aunt Man and I, even
Speaker 1: though I love miniaturization science fiction as well discussed um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was kind of like, well, not enough that he's
Speaker 1: little one, does you have to talk to aunts too?
Speaker 1: And then I also had been following some of the
Speaker 1: production history with that being part of it and not
Speaker 1: being a part of it. That was part of my hesitant. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The reason why I was hesitant to see it was
Speaker 1: I'm a big egg right fan, and I had followed
Speaker 1: you know, we don't need to go into all that here,
Speaker 1: but I kind of followed the troubled production of this
Speaker 1: movie and was really looking forward to his take on
Speaker 1: the character. Um, but I think that there's some glimmers
Speaker 1: of his voice in that movie still, I think so. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and Joe Cornish to the guy who did attack
Speaker 1: the Block, also helped work on this, right, Yeah, I thought.
Speaker 1: I thought the end result was a heck of a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. I enjoy it, And after I saw it,
Speaker 1: I said, hey, let's uh flu this. Let's let's do
Speaker 1: an episode that I was a big nerd. So so
Speaker 1: here's the thing, like, for this episode, I'm gonna try
Speaker 1: to restrain my comic nerd. Um. I am gonna probably
Speaker 1: cover the segment on just sort of how comic book
Speaker 1: aunt Man compares to to movie aunt Man, and I'll
Speaker 1: probably interject here there. But Robert's gonna keep me on track,
Speaker 1: and we're in a drastic to the science of this,
Speaker 1: because there's some really fascinating stuff that you know, honestly,
Speaker 1: like approaching this, didn't think was gonna turn out to
Speaker 1: be true. Yeah, Yeah, it's it's it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: funny how much how much great science there is in
Speaker 1: the film. Uh, So just just start off, let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about miniaturization science fiction itself, because this
Speaker 1: provides sort of the soil from which ant Man it
Speaker 1: initially emerges, and then the latest incarnation the film also, uh,
Speaker 1: comes out of this history. Yeah, there's a fascination I
Speaker 1: think that probably popped up in the late fifties and
Speaker 1: early sixties, which is when ant Man the comic was
Speaker 1: created with the idea of shrinking and or growing things. Right,
Speaker 1: we were fascinated with giant ants and bugs and stuff
Speaker 1: being monsters in horror movies. And yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: a lot of this comes out of increased awareness of
Speaker 1: what's going on at the smaller levels of nature and uh,
Speaker 1: and also our ability to share that with the general population.
Speaker 1: People were able to see these close up photos and
Speaker 1: their and learning about our our continuing exploration of these
Speaker 1: tiny realms. So one of the one of the big
Speaker 1: ones that we have to mention is, of course Richard
Speaker 1: Matheson's novel The Shrinking Man and the subsequent nine seven
Speaker 1: movie The Incredible Shrinking Man. And I've read I don't
Speaker 1: know how this matches up with the timeline. I've read
Speaker 1: that these were supposedly a big influence on on Hank
Speaker 1: Pim the Hand character about his first adventure in which
Speaker 1: he what he falls into an aunt hill. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the first, uh, the first comic that they did at
Speaker 1: Marvel with him. And I don't even know if he
Speaker 1: was necessarily a superhero at that point. I think it
Speaker 1: was just kind of a you know, scientists, mad Science
Speaker 1: Gonna rise story. But yeah, man, Richard Matheson, Like when
Speaker 1: you go back and look at that guy's resume, he
Speaker 1: influenced so much pop culture. Oh yeah, he did. And
Speaker 1: of course we have to mention the nineteen sixty six
Speaker 1: film Fantastic Voyage, in which a tiny submarine that contains
Speaker 1: a miniaturized Raquel Welch and a miniaturized Donald Pleasants and
Speaker 1: some other people that of varying importance, and they are
Speaker 1: you know, sent into the bloodstream, going in there to
Speaker 1: address an illness at a at a at a very
Speaker 1: small scale. Yeah, there's there's there is a fascination like
Speaker 1: with this shrinking and growing thing, right, like the ones
Speaker 1: that I remember more often, the the growing ones, like
Speaker 1: Attack of the fifty Foot Woman. That's one, right, that
Speaker 1: was one of those big movies of the time, Amazing
Speaker 1: Colossal Man that was another giant them wash um. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, Fantastic Voyage itself kind of spins off into
Speaker 1: its own little franchise. Isaac Asimov did the novelization in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixty six and we'll discuss some of his
Speaker 1: science City and jacks into the franchise in a bit.
Speaker 1: He also did a Fantastic Voyage to Destination Brain in
Speaker 1: eighties seven. I read the former novel, but I remember
Speaker 1: trying to read the second one. I was like in
Speaker 1: junior high at the time, and I think I just
Speaker 1: kind of timed out on some of the science again
Speaker 1: at the time. I should give it another read. Um.
Speaker 1: Kevin J. Anderson did Fantastic Voyage Microcosm much later, in
Speaker 1: which the crew explores the body of a dead alien. Wow.
Speaker 1: That sounds interesting, and I was. I was surprised to
Speaker 1: hear that in sixty eight there was a Fantastic Voyage
Speaker 1: animated series. I don't think I've ever seen a clip
Speaker 1: of this hadn't either. Yeah, that's in fact, like my
Speaker 1: knowledge of the whole Fantastic Voyage, you know, franchise is
Speaker 1: rather limited. This sounds like a treasure trove of stuff
Speaker 1: to go back to. Yeah, and then of course Fantastic
Speaker 1: Voyage itself directly influenced the fabulous nine film Interspace, And
Speaker 1: this is the one I remember from growing up. I
Speaker 1: was ten when this came out and they hadn't I
Speaker 1: want to say it was like Universal Studios or something
Speaker 1: like that. When I was a kid had an Inner
Speaker 1: Space ride and it was like one of those things
Speaker 1: where you you went into a room with like shaky
Speaker 1: seats and you basically watched a movie where like Martin
Speaker 1: Short or somebody walked you through as you went through
Speaker 1: the body. You know. Um, that was pretty cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a It was a great film I remember to
Speaker 1: watch as a kid because you had all the you know,
Speaker 1: you had all this Martin Short manic stuff. Dennis Quaid
Speaker 1: was Dennis Quaid was was miniaturized in this cool little
Speaker 1: submarine in Martin Short. And then in the climax that
Speaker 1: I just I must have watched dozens of times as
Speaker 1: a kid. You had the bad guys miniaturized as well
Speaker 1: in his own little robot suit and they do battle
Speaker 1: in uh in the stomach. It's cool to aunt man
Speaker 1: in a way. Yeah, they didn't really go in anybody's body.
Speaker 1: In aunt Man, for the most part, it's because he's
Speaker 1: ant sized and not like they're like microscopic, and yeah,
Speaker 1: they're much smaller, but but very similar, especially when you
Speaker 1: get into the battling chokh And then of course Fantastic
Speaker 1: Voyage and Inner Space went on to influence. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: a Futurama episode par Parasites Lost. Uh you remember this one.
Speaker 1: This is where Fry gets intestinal worms from eating a
Speaker 1: I think like a tuna fish sandwich that he buys
Speaker 1: from a condom machine and galactic trucks. Always a bad idea,
Speaker 1: but that's that's a great miniaturization episode. There's a wonderful
Speaker 1: Rick and Morty episode titled Anatomy Park. Yeah. I can
Speaker 1: only imagine the mind of Dan Harmon at work on
Speaker 1: something like that. Sounds like a Jurassic Park. Honey, I
Speaker 1: shrunk the kids mash up. Yeah, yeah, but pretty much
Speaker 1: it's well, it's it's it's kind of a Fantastic Voyage
Speaker 1: meets a neat Jurassic Parks. So we have all these
Speaker 1: deadly viruses that are kept in kind of a Jurassic
Speaker 1: Park inside the body of kind. I think it's an alcoholic,
Speaker 1: homeless Santa Claus, and then you get you get yourself miniaturized,
Speaker 1: and then you go and visit and you can meet
Speaker 1: all these terrible, you know, pathogens. Yeah, this sounds like
Speaker 1: Dan Harmon with an unlimited budget. So and then I
Speaker 1: just mentioned Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, which is you
Speaker 1: know what, were there three of those movies or something
Speaker 1: like that. I can't remember, but yeah, there was they
Speaker 1: shrunk the kid and then they blew up the baby
Speaker 1: something like that, and then I don't remember. I think
Speaker 1: there was a third bit. I never said. They were
Speaker 1: definitely again, like I want to say that those came
Speaker 1: out sometime in my three teen years or something like that,
Speaker 1: so I remember seeing them, but I don't remember a
Speaker 1: lot about them. It was that sort of arrow when
Speaker 1: like c G I was was just really starting to
Speaker 1: become convincing. So the idea of Rick moranis getting shrunken
Speaker 1: down into his front yard and having to travel around
Speaker 1: with all the Yeah I believe aunts again answered like
Speaker 1: the go to for this miniaturization thing. Yeah, I mean, because,
Speaker 1: as we'll discuss in the second half of this episode,
Speaker 1: there are so fascinating and their world is is just
Speaker 1: so alien and an an intricate that we we can't
Speaker 1: help but imagine ourselves immersed in it. And then you
Speaker 1: know this, a lot of this spawned into and also
Speaker 1: out of comic books. There is as much of a
Speaker 1: fascination with miniaturization and comics as there is in film
Speaker 1: and television from that time. So you've got aunt Man. Uh.
Speaker 1: D C has their version of aunt Man, which is
Speaker 1: the atom uh. And then uh, the ant Man has
Speaker 1: his wife, the Wasp. Uh well sometimes wife, sometimes not wife.
Speaker 1: I'll talk about that in a little bit. And uh,
Speaker 1: there's there's all kinds of other series. In fact, there
Speaker 1: was even I think in the eighties there was a
Speaker 1: series called Micronots that was about like, uh like it
Speaker 1: was sort of like Star Wars meets ant Man, right,
Speaker 1: Like the idea was like they they lived in this
Speaker 1: tiny micro verse that was so small it was completely
Speaker 1: like it was sort of like the quantum realm from
Speaker 1: aunt Man. All right, well, tell me about aunt Man.
Speaker 1: I'm coming at it as a guy who basically knows
Speaker 1: what I saw in the film and you know, skimming
Speaker 1: a few uh you know, comic wiki pages about him.
Speaker 1: Give me the full story. So ant Man is created
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty two at Marvel Comics by the usual
Speaker 1: suspect Stanley and Jack Kirby, also with some help from
Speaker 1: Larry Lieber, who is Stanley's brother. Uh. And basically it's
Speaker 1: the character has usually been the version that Michael Douglas
Speaker 1: portrays in the movie right, the older heck Pim character,
Speaker 1: except for he's not older in the in the original comics. UM.
Speaker 1: But the gist is he's a super scientist who fights crime.
Speaker 1: The way he does it is he has these PIM
Speaker 1: particles that he's invented that enable him to shunt his
Speaker 1: mass or gain mass from an alternate dimension. Uh, and
Speaker 1: he either shrinks or he gets big. And he used
Speaker 1: to like swallow capsules. I think when they first came out, Um,
Speaker 1: then he breathed in particle filled gas. I think that's
Speaker 1: why that the helmet. Then helmet sort of has like
Speaker 1: a gas mask look to it. And then eventually, if
Speaker 1: I remember the cannon correctly, there's something about how his
Speaker 1: body absorbed the PIM particles, so he was basically just
Speaker 1: producing them on his own, and he could at will
Speaker 1: shrink or grow, and he could also like shrink or
Speaker 1: grow other objects nearby him. Or other people. Okay, so
Speaker 1: is it kind of like the whole Spider Man deal
Speaker 1: where at times Spider Man is shooting webs because he's
Speaker 1: made fantastic little devices. In other times it becomes more
Speaker 1: a part of who he is physically. Uh No, I
Speaker 1: think it's like because those are two like this is
Speaker 1: super nerdy, but that the comic book version is the
Speaker 1: one with the web shooters. The movie version is the
Speaker 1: one where it shoots out organically. Okay, so he never
Speaker 1: shoots it out organically in the comics. They they reckcondit
Speaker 1: later on in like the two thousands for a series
Speaker 1: called Ultimate Spider Man. But yes, so in this case,
Speaker 1: I think it was like sort of the same character
Speaker 1: in the same universe, but he just you know, over time,
Speaker 1: they're like capsules. That's kind of lame. Let's do gas,
Speaker 1: we don't. He doesn't need the gas. He can just
Speaker 1: change um. And so the deal was was he was
Speaker 1: aunt Man. He joins the Avengers. He usually teams up
Speaker 1: with his girlfriends, sometimes wife Janet van Dyne, who is
Speaker 1: the Wasp, And in the movie they sort of hint
Speaker 1: at that and they show flashbacks to their crime fighting
Speaker 1: career together. The thing about Aunt Man of spoilers for
Speaker 1: aunt Man comics that are like, I guess, forty years
Speaker 1: old at this point. But uh, the thing about aunt
Speaker 1: Man that isn't really touched upon in the movies at
Speaker 1: all is that he has tons of different identities. So
Speaker 1: aunt Man isn't just Hank Pim's identity. He also becomes
Speaker 1: Giant Man, where he just grows and smashes things. And
Speaker 1: then I guess he thought Giant Man wasn't a cool
Speaker 1: enough name, so he changes it to Goliath, and then
Speaker 1: he changes his name to Yellow Jacket and he starts
Speaker 1: shrinking again. Uh. And then there's even a point I
Speaker 1: think it was this was in the two thousands where
Speaker 1: the Wasp died or something, and to honor her memory,
Speaker 1: he became the Wasp. So he was like the male
Speaker 1: version of the Wasp, al right, So if he recognized
Speaker 1: that you gotta keep mixing it up, you gotta keep
Speaker 1: reinventing yourself, so much so that like I believe it
Speaker 1: is part of the character's history that he had multiple
Speaker 1: personality disorder because like he was having a difficult time
Speaker 1: tracking all of his secret identities, and something to do
Speaker 1: with the particle ingestion was messing with his mind. So
Speaker 1: like when he the Yellow Jacket character, he's almost like
Speaker 1: a different person um and and sort of a villain. Uh.
Speaker 1: And sometimes he gets brainwashed by villains. Other times he's
Speaker 1: replaced by shape shifting aliens. So this character has this
Speaker 1: like really bizarre history of sometimes just being completely aloof
Speaker 1: to what's going on in the rest of the storylines
Speaker 1: around him, basically because he's not himself, to the point
Speaker 1: that there is a classic storyline in ant Man that
Speaker 1: I'm sure the film producers tried to stay away from
Speaker 1: as much as possible, in which aunt Man becomes very
Speaker 1: aggressive in his person persona as Yellow Jacket and has
Speaker 1: a mental breakdown, and when the Wasp tries to intervene
Speaker 1: because they're married at this point, he hits her and
Speaker 1: is expelled from the Avengers. They end up getting a divorce, uh,
Speaker 1: and then I think, like, you know, maybe twenty or
Speaker 1: thirty years later in the comics they resumed their romance.
Speaker 1: But so he's sort of like the ant Man I
Speaker 1: grew up with reading in the eighties was always this
Speaker 1: like disheveled guy who had like in broken because like
Speaker 1: he had this mental breakdown and then like was sort
Speaker 1: of reviled by all the other superheroes because he hit
Speaker 1: his wife. Uh oh, and also he is in the
Speaker 1: comics the guy who invents Ultron, the big bad robot
Speaker 1: from the Avengers movie. Everybody's like, great, you hit your
Speaker 1: wife and you invent this robot that accidentally tries to
Speaker 1: kill us all the time. Okay, So luckily in the
Speaker 1: in the Marvel films, we've gotten to move that off
Speaker 1: and blame that on Tony Stone. Yeah, exactly. They chose
Speaker 1: to get that to Robert Downey Jr. He was already
Speaker 1: charming enough. All right, let's let's get into the movie
Speaker 1: a bit now, before we get into the miniaturization science
Speaker 1: and the quantum physics and the ultimately what we see
Speaker 1: some of the ants doing in the picture. You want
Speaker 1: to touch on some of the just straight up caper science. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: when I was watching it, I was sort of stunned
Speaker 1: by the scene. So again, if you haven't seen the movie,
Speaker 1: we're gonna spoil the hell out of it this episode.
Speaker 1: But uh, Scott Lang, who is the not aunt man
Speaker 1: at this point. The premise of the movie is that
Speaker 1: Scott Lang breaks into Hank Pim's house to steal the suit. Uh,
Speaker 1: the sort of heisty stuff that he does to get
Speaker 1: in past. His defenses were science in a way. Uh.
Speaker 1: And at the time I was watching it and I
Speaker 1: was like, this is completely false, Like there's no way
Speaker 1: that you could get past a fingerprint scanner with super
Speaker 1: glue the way that he does. And in fact, Joe
Speaker 1: and I are working on something right now about forensic
Speaker 1: science and superglue. Fuming is a thing that is done
Speaker 1: to gather fingerprint evidence, and so much so that it's
Speaker 1: one of the few ways that you can pull a
Speaker 1: fingerprint off of a dead body. So there is some
Speaker 1: science to that, but it's not necessarily. I don't know
Speaker 1: that you could take the superglue itself, reform it and
Speaker 1: then turn it into something that a fingerprint scanner would understand,
Speaker 1: you know, much less do it on a fly like that.
Speaker 1: And I don't even want to get into doesn't he
Speaker 1: like freeze the door somehow to say free like filling
Speaker 1: it with water and then freezing the water. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I maybe there's some science to that one too. I
Speaker 1: didn't look too deep into that, but I wanted to
Speaker 1: mention that they at least tried. There's some stuff going
Speaker 1: on there. The superglue thing is uh slightly accurate. Um.
Speaker 1: But the reason for this is that they had uh
Speaker 1: an actual scientist on set who is sort of there,
Speaker 1: I guess, reference point and adviser. And his name is
Speaker 1: Dr Spiros Machalicus. Uh. He's from cal Tech, California, and
Speaker 1: he consulted mainly about quantum physics and the miniaturization stuff.
Speaker 1: But you know, maybe he also was like, by the way,
Speaker 1: you can break into this lock with superglue. All right,
Speaker 1: so we yeah, we're gonna touch on some of Macalicus's
Speaker 1: um thoughts and on the science of aunt Man. We're
Speaker 1: also going to reference the physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of Greek guys looking into the science of
Speaker 1: of superheroes here. Uh. I do want to add here
Speaker 1: before we dive into this that so obviously it would
Speaker 1: have been ideal if we had done this right when
Speaker 1: the movie came out in theaters, but I actually like
Speaker 1: that we're not because so much was paid attention to
Speaker 1: the science in articles or an other kind of you know,
Speaker 1: content that was created around the internet when that movie
Speaker 1: came out, that we're able to sort of gather it
Speaker 1: all together, compare notes, and do like the full shebang now,
Speaker 1: where um, like wired had some pieces and nerdiced had
Speaker 1: some pieces, but they didn't have like all of it together.
Speaker 1: And this I feel like we're able to bring it
Speaker 1: all together now a couple of months later. Yeah. And plus,
Speaker 1: if you're like me and you only get out to
Speaker 1: see a movie in the theater once or twice a year,
Speaker 1: then then you know this is this is maybe a
Speaker 1: more ideal time. So let's start off by talking about miniaturization,
Speaker 1: which again we've seen in so many different science fiction
Speaker 1: films and TV shows and comics. But how would it
Speaker 1: possibly work? So here's the thing, just to get this
Speaker 1: out of the way. Miniaturization, as we comprehend it is
Speaker 1: physically impossible based on our understanding of physics. There's so
Speaker 1: many reasons why it wouldn't work, not even just the miniaturization,
Speaker 1: but we'll talk later as well as like even if
Speaker 1: you could come up with some way to miniatureize a body,
Speaker 1: there's so many things that would go wrong with that body.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's miniaturized. Yeah, it's like going from you know,
Speaker 1: duplos to normal legos or vice versa. Yeah, So as
Speaker 1: Umkakalios points out in his book, at a very basic level,
Speaker 1: matters made out of atoms, and the size of an
Speaker 1: atom is a fundamental length scale of nature, and it's
Speaker 1: not open to continue with adjustment. And furthermore, Isaac Asimov,
Speaker 1: who of course had to crunch the science way back
Speaker 1: when he did his novelization of Fantastic Voyage, which is
Speaker 1: interesting because, as I recall the story, there was they said, hey, hey, Isaac,
Speaker 1: we need should write a novelization of this hot new film,
Speaker 1: and He's like, how, I don't want to do it,
Speaker 1: and they finally agreed to let him to get him
Speaker 1: to do it, provided he got to tweet the science
Speaker 1: to try and make it work a little bit him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So in his novelization he points out that to make
Speaker 1: something smaller it requires either one making the atom smaller,
Speaker 1: to removing a large fraction of the atoms, or three
Speaker 1: pushing the atoms closer together. Right, And there's I believe
Speaker 1: Kakalios and others have sort of debunked why those things
Speaker 1: wouldn't work either. But yeah, I should also point out
Speaker 1: we mentioned that the sequel that Dasma did Fantastic Voyage
Speaker 1: to Destination brain um, and in that he provided his
Speaker 1: own sci fi model for miniaturization, which was involved the
Speaker 1: creation of a quote local distortion field that changes the
Speaker 1: value of planks constant. And that's a that's a physical constant.
Speaker 1: That is the quantum of action central and quantum mechanics,
Speaker 1: and it's a fundamental constant of the universe. But if
Speaker 1: you could adjust planks constant and therefore make it, I
Speaker 1: guess planks adjustable. Uh, you could shrink things as you please.
Speaker 1: But it's all sci fi magic as to how you
Speaker 1: might do it. And I think that's ultimately a part
Speaker 1: of any of these models, is there. You can sort
Speaker 1: of say a point A, and we can get to
Speaker 1: sort of say point see, and we can get our result.
Speaker 1: But there's a missing point of magic in there that involved,
Speaker 1: and that's what makes it science fiction exactly. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: have to like the connecting thread between the things, even
Speaker 1: even as much as you do, you know, I admire
Speaker 1: that he did the research to sort of kind of
Speaker 1: come up with various ways, but they don't necessarily connect.
Speaker 1: But so Cacallios in his book argues that if PIM
Speaker 1: particles were somehow able to change the mass of electrons,
Speaker 1: that those particles would then be in closer orbits and
Speaker 1: the um. This is called the bore radius. We're gonna
Speaker 1: end up talking about this and Planks constant quite a bit,
Speaker 1: and so those particles would be closer in orbit to
Speaker 1: the respective atoms and molecules that they surround, because electrons
Speaker 1: and the interactions between them are ultimately what prevent these
Speaker 1: objects from ever really touching each other. Having all the
Speaker 1: electrons in an object suddenly game mass would theoretically shrink
Speaker 1: the whole object. But again I'm not quite sure that
Speaker 1: that all adds up. So and like we said, atoms
Speaker 1: are always the same size right. In fact, they're a
Speaker 1: third of a nanometer. That's kind of how we quantify them. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is as planks constant uh implies a constant of
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics. So if you change the size of an atom,
Speaker 1: you would have to come up with a mechanism that
Speaker 1: just changes the value of all constants and science, right,
Speaker 1: it would just completely throw off physical properties of everything,
Speaker 1: not just like shrink things. So so instead Cacalios recommends
Speaker 1: this changing the bore radius method UH, which is related
Speaker 1: to the average size of an atom. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't think they actually add up. But there is
Speaker 1: um another person who did some really great science articles
Speaker 1: over at Wired dot com. I believe his name is
Speaker 1: Rhett Elaine. He always does these fun articles looking at
Speaker 1: the science of superheroes whenever one of these big budget
Speaker 1: UM superhero movies comes out. He did two articles on
Speaker 1: ant Man uh and so he proposed two options. One was,
Speaker 1: uh ant Man could keep his same mass, but in
Speaker 1: this scenario his density would increase. Okay, so he shrinks,
Speaker 1: but he's he's super dense. At half an inch tall,
Speaker 1: he would be two point eight million times more dense
Speaker 1: than a regular human. So he would obviously just sink
Speaker 1: right through everything. You know. He would sink through a tabletop,
Speaker 1: you would sink through the earth, you know. So it
Speaker 1: would be able to ride an around. No, but I
Speaker 1: kill every and but I remember thinking, like when they
Speaker 1: when they just naturized him in the film and something,
Speaker 1: he's showing all these superpowers. I was thinking, well, maybe
Speaker 1: it's there's a certain amount of density involved, Like essentially,
Speaker 1: he's this really heavy bullet that can just launch him
Speaker 1: like that. He's or like that he's moving the density
Speaker 1: around in his body somewhere right, Like, maybe he's moving
Speaker 1: that two point eight million times of density into his
Speaker 1: fist and that's why when he punches people at super
Speaker 1: tiny size. I don't know, it doesn't it doesn't quite
Speaker 1: work out, but that was one of the Lane's best guesses.
Speaker 1: Uh so there's that. Or he could keep his same
Speaker 1: density and have a lower mass. But where does the
Speaker 1: mask go? And that's essentially the argument of the Stanley
Speaker 1: science behind this, which is, well, it just goes into
Speaker 1: an alternate dimension. Um, there's an exhaust pipe of just
Speaker 1: pure energy. I want to know, I want to like
Speaker 1: see what this alternate like all Hank pims mass or
Speaker 1: where what kind of mass is he pulling in when
Speaker 1: he when he grows larger. But yeah, so the idea
Speaker 1: here is that you know, but they would potentially also
Speaker 1: convert to energy, like if you're shunting that kind of
Speaker 1: mass around. I think Elaine even says at one point
Speaker 1: that like that if you do the math on it,
Speaker 1: the amount of energy that would be created if he
Speaker 1: was shrinking Downder the size he has could like power
Speaker 1: a city or something like that. Um, so the best
Speaker 1: he comes up with is this shifting mass thing, putting
Speaker 1: it into other dimensions, and the way he looks at
Speaker 1: it is like, well, he does like an illustration of uh,
Speaker 1: if you move two dimensions into three dimensions, here's how
Speaker 1: it would work. And then he sort of hypothesizes maybe
Speaker 1: what's going on with ant Man is he's shifting three
Speaker 1: dimensional mass into a fourth dimension somehow that we're not
Speaker 1: quite aware of. This would allow him to have the
Speaker 1: same mass, the same strength and everything, but he wouldn't
Speaker 1: actually be small, right, It would just be like an
Speaker 1: illusion because we're seeing like a fourth dimensional object in
Speaker 1: third three dimensions or something like that. Yeah, yeah, we
Speaker 1: have three spatial dimensions in a in a fourth dimension
Speaker 1: of time, but in this case, it would be a
Speaker 1: fourth spatial dimension, which makes me, you know, try and
Speaker 1: imagine it. It's kind of kind of like this big
Speaker 1: dude and it becomes small and he pushes his excess
Speaker 1: mass out into a gigantic tumor that extends into another
Speaker 1: spatial dimension. This is what I think that the people
Speaker 1: who are currently working on ant Man comics should be exploring,
Speaker 1: is like, what does that gross fourth dimension look like?
Speaker 1: Where he's just pushing mass and pulling mass. There's got
Speaker 1: to be something creepy to tell you, I'm just imagining
Speaker 1: like Origami and an aphex twin video coming together. It
Speaker 1: work perfectly. I think that's what the Edgar Right version
Speaker 1: of the media. So Okay, So this leads us to
Speaker 1: the big question. Yeah, miniaturization is totally impossible. But what
Speaker 1: about this whole ant man strength thing? Right? So the
Speaker 1: premises because that's a big, big part of it is
Speaker 1: not only small. It's one thing to be small and
Speaker 1: like spying people and maybe move the pins around, but
Speaker 1: ultimately he's also able to fight dudes that are giants
Speaker 1: to him. Yeah. In the movies, he's like he can
Speaker 1: jump with this amount of strength that he would have
Speaker 1: if he was normal size. So he's this this ant
Speaker 1: that's leaping up and jumping around guns and stuff like
Speaker 1: that and punching people out. Uh. And this goes back
Speaker 1: to the comics Entails to Astonish number thirty eight. Pim
Speaker 1: says that he retains all of his normal size and
Speaker 1: strength when he shrinks. Uh. And Kakalios asks in his book,
Speaker 1: how does aunt Man punch his way out of a
Speaker 1: paper bag? And he uses an example from one of
Speaker 1: the old comics in which aunt Man gets trapped in
Speaker 1: a vacuum bag. I think like he gets vacuumed up
Speaker 1: and he's in the bag, and he just punches his
Speaker 1: way right through because he's like, well, I have the
Speaker 1: strength of a normal size guy, and a normal size
Speaker 1: guy could punch those bags and no, whoop um. There's
Speaker 1: interesting science behind this that it may be plausible. Now,
Speaker 1: remember the miniaturization. We don't have an answer for that.
Speaker 1: But our actual strength comes from our skeleton and our muscles,
Speaker 1: and they act like a series of interconnected levers. Right,
Speaker 1: So think of strength as lift and our arms are
Speaker 1: the levers that lift things and throw them. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: if you use the principles of seesaw and torque, as
Speaker 1: Cacalios does, he argues, aunt Man could punch his way
Speaker 1: out of a bag. Basically, it goes like this. The
Speaker 1: ratio of movement in the human arm is one to seven,
Speaker 1: regardless of what your size is. Right, It's all about
Speaker 1: the cross sectional area of muscles in our arms. Uh So,
Speaker 1: it's not the length that matters, it's sort of their proportions. Okay,
Speaker 1: So if ant Man, this is Cacalios's math, If aunt
Speaker 1: Man is point zero to one times his normal height,
Speaker 1: the force of his muscles provide a reduced factor of
Speaker 1: ready for it, point zero one squared, which equals point
Speaker 1: zero zero zero one. And at normal size, if he
Speaker 1: could punch with a force of two hundred pounds, divide
Speaker 1: that by his fist cross sectional size of five square inches. Okay,
Speaker 1: the pressure his fist applies is forty pounds per square inch.
Speaker 1: So he's he's making a rough guest that like a
Speaker 1: normal size person that you know could could probably make
Speaker 1: about forty pounds per square inch punch. At tiny size,
Speaker 1: he delivers less force right. In fact, it would be
Speaker 1: in comparison to the two hundred pounds point zero two pounds.
Speaker 1: But his fist is also smaller, so the force per
Speaker 1: unit area of his tiny punch also comes out to
Speaker 1: forty pounds per square inch when you do the math,
Speaker 1: which is point zero two pounds divided by the size
Speaker 1: of point zero zero zero five square inches for his
Speaker 1: fifth size. So Cacalias did all this out and he
Speaker 1: thinks he, regardless of the size, he can punch with
Speaker 1: the pressure of forty pounds per square inch and therefore
Speaker 1: punch his way out of the paper bag. But my
Speaker 1: question is this what happens when he grows. I know
Speaker 1: in the Ant Man movie, like he hasn't gotten to
Speaker 1: that point yet. I'm sure that will be in the
Speaker 1: sequel where he gets big, right, but like, uh, I
Speaker 1: think there was a scene where like, uh an ant
Speaker 1: accidentally like ingested the stuff and got the size of
Speaker 1: a dog and it has no problem moving around. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So like, based on this cross sectional area math, does
Speaker 1: that then mean if like he's Giant Man, that he's
Speaker 1: still also punching with forty pounds per square inch because
Speaker 1: it's based on the cross section of his fist size
Speaker 1: and the force that his arm is applying. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: there a whole set of constraints that come into play
Speaker 1: in the when you can't start thinking about the giant side.
Speaker 1: For instance, Cacalios points out that you could compare Giant
Speaker 1: Man to a redwood tree. The taller the tree, the
Speaker 1: wider the trunk, and in order to provide support for
Speaker 1: the large mass above it, the tree needs a very
Speaker 1: broad base. And he says, quote, Giant Man could in
Speaker 1: principle grow as tall as a redwood tree, but he
Speaker 1: would have to be just as mobile, so we just
Speaker 1: immediately fall over. Yeah, yeah, I think I remember there's
Speaker 1: like a point where they sort of update the comics. Uh.
Speaker 1: And when he does the giant man thing, that's something
Speaker 1: he talks about like he has a really hard time balancing. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it just it's a it's more about the
Speaker 1: anatomy than it is about the size. Yeah. Like an
Speaker 1: example that I've run across multiple times when dealing with
Speaker 1: large fantastic creatures, particularly when you're talking about gods, Villa
Speaker 1: and King Kong and stuff, is think of a cow
Speaker 1: as a sphere. Okay, a spherical cow. Uh. And as
Speaker 1: a sphere gets bigger, it's volume increases more rapidly than
Speaker 1: its surface area. Double the radius of a sphere and
Speaker 1: the surface area increases four times, and the volume increases
Speaker 1: eight times. So you double something size and you keep
Speaker 1: its proportions the same. Well, that means that the weight
Speaker 1: doesn't double or even quadruple, it increases by a factor
Speaker 1: of eight. So a creatures more morphography, especially human morphography,
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to match that. You need stocky your limbs.
Speaker 1: Um giant man might need to walk around on all
Speaker 1: fours like a like a like a dinosaur, And then
Speaker 1: you have to also factor in things like blood flow
Speaker 1: and other issues like think of the giraffe. Since the
Speaker 1: giraffe's brain is so far away from its heart, it
Speaker 1: boasts an extremely high blood blood pressure about twice that
Speaker 1: found in humans and uh, and plus the giraffe heartbeats
Speaker 1: up to one seventy times per minute, double that of humans.
Speaker 1: And the plumbing is is also a position so that
Speaker 1: so that there's a special net of arteries and veins
Speaker 1: that divert blood flow when it lowers its head to
Speaker 1: drink to keep this increased pressure to the head from
Speaker 1: making its head explode. Yeah, so okay, The pim particles
Speaker 1: may address the fictional science of like shunting mass to
Speaker 1: another dimension, but they certainly don't address all those anatomical needs,
Speaker 1: both in the large form of giant man or goliath
Speaker 1: or whatever he wants to call himself this week or
Speaker 1: when he gets tiny as a man. Right, It's kind
Speaker 1: of like thinking from a like an economic uh point
Speaker 1: of view, Like imagine a McDonald's restaurant in a small town, right,
Speaker 1: and just thinking about the economic job. But if you
Speaker 1: just say, hey, let's make this a bigger operation. Let's
Speaker 1: put one on every street corner, Let's let's do sixteen
Speaker 1: McDonald's restaurants in this one small town can Does that
Speaker 1: make sense because it's not isolated, it's not existing in
Speaker 1: a bubble. It's tied in to the economic infrastructure of
Speaker 1: the surrounding area. And that's what we see time and
Speaker 1: time again with miniaturization or or or giant man. Is
Speaker 1: that whatever the size of the being, it's it's atomic structure,
Speaker 1: it's molecular structure, the it's it's morphography, every every aspect
Speaker 1: of its existence is tied into the fabric that's going
Speaker 1: to have to exist in the ecosystem around it that
Speaker 1: isn't shrinking or growing, right, And that is the hard
Speaker 1: party then and then involved the building blocks that involves
Speaker 1: the function everything. Yeah, and this is you know why,
Speaker 1: you know, we always hear this, like I don't know
Speaker 1: what the exact figure is, but like ants are fifty
Speaker 1: times stronger than human beings are for their proportional size
Speaker 1: or whatever. This is basically why because that whole cross
Speaker 1: sectional anatomy type thing. Right, Okay, so aunt man gets
Speaker 1: his strength from the fact that an organisms volume is
Speaker 1: dependent on the cube of its height, right, But if
Speaker 1: you extrapolate the math all the way outwards, you get
Speaker 1: these ants that can lift objects that are many times
Speaker 1: their own mass, Right, So that's where that comes from.
Speaker 1: It's that the the the anatomy of the ant is
Speaker 1: giving them the strength, not necessarily the size. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: imagined they also took some inspiration from the jumping power
Speaker 1: of the common Fleet, which is the the most tremendous
Speaker 1: jumping potential for its size of any creature on the planet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's definitely like the bits where he's like bouncing around
Speaker 1: and jumping off bullets and stuff. All Right, So there's
Speaker 1: a scene in the movie where and this is like
Speaker 1: I think pretty spoiler ish for the movie, Uh, he
Speaker 1: shrinks down so small that he enters into do they
Speaker 1: call it the quantum realm? And they do. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so basically the fictional premise here is that, like there's
Speaker 1: something with the suit where like if if you don't
Speaker 1: regulate it the right way or something, you shrink down
Speaker 1: and you're lost forever in the quantum room. And this
Speaker 1: is what happened to the loss, Like if you try
Speaker 1: and go too small in order to you know, go
Speaker 1: through a particularly difficult a material, then you run the
Speaker 1: risk of just getting smaller and smaller entering the quantum
Speaker 1: realm and just losing yourself in a place where the
Speaker 1: rules of of our physical world don't necessarily hope. So
Speaker 1: this is sort of like the movie logic and comic logic.
Speaker 1: I guess of like, why he doesn't get smaller than
Speaker 1: half an inch tall? Right? Yeah, because he just gets
Speaker 1: way out of his league, and smaller he gets. And
Speaker 1: of course there's a This is based in a large
Speaker 1: part on on on a very real place that we
Speaker 1: we scientists, actually called the quantum realm. And this is
Speaker 1: where events play out at distances of nanometers. Many laws
Speaker 1: and classical physics of the classical physics appear to break down.
Speaker 1: So in the quantum realm, for instance, scientists can predict
Speaker 1: very little with one accuracy. According to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle,
Speaker 1: you can't even measure the position of an object without
Speaker 1: disturbing its momentum in an unpredictable way. Classical physics physics
Speaker 1: also fail to account for this phenomenon, as it serves
Speaker 1: as a prime example of what we call quantum weirdness.
Speaker 1: Uh there's also the so called EPR paradox name for
Speaker 1: Albert Einstein uh bores Podolski and Nathan Rosen. And this
Speaker 1: applies an even extants, even stranger example of quantum weirdness,
Speaker 1: in which to sub atomic particles thousands of light years
Speaker 1: apart can instantaneously respond to each other's motions. And this
Speaker 1: is of course quantum entanglement. It takes place at the
Speaker 1: particle level. And uh and in two thousand nine, I
Speaker 1: just were actually able to produce the effect with linked superconductors.
Speaker 1: So it's it's a place where, yeah, we're thinking the
Speaker 1: weird things are, We're still trying to understand how everything works.
Speaker 1: It's also a perfect place for magic and the unexplained
Speaker 1: to emerge in a comic. Yeah, and definitely, like I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people described Aunt Man is like
Speaker 1: the weirdest superhero you've ever seen, And I think the
Speaker 1: quantum realm stuff is probably why, because like when he
Speaker 1: goes into the quantum realm, it's basically like a psychedelic
Speaker 1: acid trip, right, Yeah, And I thought they did a
Speaker 1: good job of presenting it that way, because I mean,
Speaker 1: how do you visually present this quantum realm? And yeah, well,
Speaker 1: the human senses at that size wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: comprehend what's going on. It's interesting to you ask if
Speaker 1: they actually call it the quantum realm in the movie.
Speaker 1: And apparently we can thank Macalicus for that, because they
Speaker 1: were going to call it the micro verse. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's from the comics. That's why I was surprised,
Speaker 1: because I was like, oh, it's the micro verse. He's
Speaker 1: gonna go to the micro verse where the micro knots. Right.
Speaker 1: But but the thing is, like, apparently micro verse is
Speaker 1: tied up with some legal issues, so they asked Macalico s.
Speaker 1: They asked that. They said, hey, what's a better term,
Speaker 1: and he rattled off a list of possible terms, and
Speaker 1: they said, oh, quantum realm. That's the one, the real thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's both the real thing and also it sounds
Speaker 1: far more fantastic than any of the other options. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't remember what the deal is with the legal issues,
Speaker 1: but micro Knots is owned by some toy company like
Speaker 1: it might be Kenner or somebody like, and therefore I
Speaker 1: think things that are related to that can't be used
Speaker 1: by Marvel in cinema. So what are some other issues
Speaker 1: that pop up? All? Right, So let's pretend for a
Speaker 1: second that we can miniaturize, you can. Let's let's agree
Speaker 1: with Stanley science or shunting mass off to an alternate
Speaker 1: tumor dimension. Uh, but there's lots of issues with our
Speaker 1: human anatomy when we get to that size. So just
Speaker 1: think about communicating if you're aunt Man size, right, if
Speaker 1: you shrink to the size of an ant, your vocal
Speaker 1: cords will shrink as well, which will ray is your
Speaker 1: voice from two hundred hurts to about three thousand, four
Speaker 1: hundred hurts, So you'd have this really high pitched, squeaky voice.
Speaker 1: So even if he had like the little headset or
Speaker 1: whatever that allows them to communicate with normal sized people,
Speaker 1: they would just hear this really high pitched like like
Speaker 1: he just I guess sucked in helium or yea. You'd
Speaker 1: have to have an adapter than his trans uh. And
Speaker 1: this is from Cacallios, by the way, in his book.
Speaker 1: And he also did some interviews around the time that
Speaker 1: the movie came out. Uh. So he also wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to aunt Man wouldn't be able to project his
Speaker 1: voice because he'd have so much less air in his
Speaker 1: diagram again, like he's shrinking. The size of air. Molis
Speaker 1: are not shrinking, so he's not gonna be able to
Speaker 1: fit them in in his lungs right. Also, the vibrating
Speaker 1: cilia in his ears would also shrink, which would go
Speaker 1: from him being able to hear twenty hurts to three
Speaker 1: d and forty hurts. He wouldn't be able to hear
Speaker 1: normal human speech, which again is at two hundred hurts,
Speaker 1: so it would just be like this tone that he's
Speaker 1: not able to distinguish. And finally, his vision would be
Speaker 1: terrible because the size of his eye opening is not
Speaker 1: a hundred or rather, as ours are hundreds of times
Speaker 1: greater than the wavelength of light, right, so when he
Speaker 1: shrinks down now, it would only be like ten times
Speaker 1: as great as the wavelength of light. This would basically
Speaker 1: make everything fuzzy and blurred because light waves would be
Speaker 1: scattering off of his iris and diffracting differently than they
Speaker 1: normally do. This is why insects have eyes that are
Speaker 1: so drastically different than than our eyes. Yeah, and even
Speaker 1: so the ant from you know, from whom he takes
Speaker 1: his namesake, have generally terrible vision, so in a sense
Speaker 1: that would make it would it would work perfectly that
Speaker 1: aunt Man couldn't see Jack and we talked about density,
Speaker 1: you know, briefly, but again, if he can ride on
Speaker 1: top of an ant, then his mass has got to
Speaker 1: also decrease in some way, or if his density remains constant,
Speaker 1: because keep in mind, density equals mass divided by volume,
Speaker 1: he's going to sink right through ant. It's so many
Speaker 1: dead ants um breathing. So I talked about this briefly, right, So, Okay,
Speaker 1: he's gonna have trouble breathing. And that's they sort of
Speaker 1: hint at that, right, like that's in the movie. They're like, well,
Speaker 1: he has to wear the suit like you can't shrink it,
Speaker 1: Like he has to have a miniaturized air supply as well,
Speaker 1: because he's miniaturized air molecules to breathe. Yeah, they don't
Speaker 1: really address how they're miniaturizing the air, but let's let's
Speaker 1: assume that that's what they're doing. But essentially the science
Speaker 1: would go like this. If you were suddenly shrunk down,
Speaker 1: the air would be like as if you were at
Speaker 1: the top of the tallest mountain. The amount of air
Speaker 1: would stay the same, but the volume it occupies would
Speaker 1: drastically increase relative to you and your new tiny size.
Speaker 1: So if you're the size of atoms. There's no way
Speaker 1: you could inhale the billions of oxygen atoms. You would
Speaker 1: need to keep your human sized metabolism running smoothly. Again,
Speaker 1: it ties into the just the economics of this creature
Speaker 1: and it has to exist within the local economy. Uh
Speaker 1: and Michael Kas also brought up the idea of ant
Speaker 1: man would have some problems with cooling down, so because
Speaker 1: he wouldn't have the same amount of surface area that
Speaker 1: he normally has to dissipate the heat that his body generates.
Speaker 1: Even moderate exertion would generate an incredible amount of heat
Speaker 1: without anywhere to go, unless maybe the heat is also
Speaker 1: going to that magical fourth dimensional tumor thing. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: his suit is operating as a cooling skill suit, which
Speaker 1: also doesn't work. As Joe and I explored in the
Speaker 1: Dune episodes, it's all it's yeah, it's all weird, even
Speaker 1: down to the point where like apparently I think this
Speaker 1: was another Elaine article that he would run really weird.
Speaker 1: So the same way we're talking about, like if your
Speaker 1: giant size, you would need to have like kind of
Speaker 1: stumpy legs balance, right, if he gets shrunk down in
Speaker 1: proportion to the gravitational field. He would be running in
Speaker 1: this very bizarre way, and it would be like kind
Speaker 1: of like these small hops is what it would basically
Speaker 1: look like. Um, and that's not even getting into the
Speaker 1: serials science. Right, So maybe he can shrink himself, but
Speaker 1: how does he shrinking his suit or his clothes or
Speaker 1: all the other things around him. In the comics they
Speaker 1: explain it away with something called that Stanley was just
Speaker 1: like unstable molecules, that's it. And and uh, the unstable
Speaker 1: molecules are actually a real thing, but these are the
Speaker 1: molecules that are falling apart or exploding for one reason
Speaker 1: or another. Uh, So there's that's not really much of
Speaker 1: an answer. But in in comics that's like, this is
Speaker 1: how the human torch can like set himself on fire
Speaker 1: and his clothes don't burn away. So how Mr Pants, yeah,
Speaker 1: Hels Pants or Mr Fantastic and stretch really far and
Speaker 1: his clothes don't rip. Uh, presumably ant Man is also
Speaker 1: wearing something made of unstable molecules. The closest we've got
Speaker 1: to this in real life is their shape memory materials,
Speaker 1: and they basically have an original configuration and then they
Speaker 1: get deformed, and they can undergo phase transitions based on
Speaker 1: like temperature, temperature changes, pressure, or applied electrical fields. So
Speaker 1: like um superhero example of this, think of Batman in
Speaker 1: those um Christopher Nolan movies. He applies an electrical field
Speaker 1: to his cape and it makes it hard so he
Speaker 1: can kind of glide around, and then the electrical field
Speaker 1: goes away and it goes back to just being a cape.
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of hilarious that that a certain amount
Speaker 1: of thought and science, or at least science fiction, went
Speaker 1: into trying to figure out how to make these superheroes
Speaker 1: wear clothes. But when it comes to the female characters, especially,
Speaker 1: there's there's a tremendous amount of effort in trying to
Speaker 1: make them wear as little as possible. So they might
Speaker 1: as well have just said, hey, sorry, science says that
Speaker 1: our superheroes can't wear clothes. They have to be naked.
Speaker 1: If you really want to go down the internet rabbit hole,
Speaker 1: look up how many costumes the Wasp has worn over
Speaker 1: the years. Uh, she's I believe They explain it away
Speaker 1: at one point by saying like, oh, she's a fashion designer,
Speaker 1: so she's constantly changing her costume. But like there's like
Speaker 1: hundreds of costumes and they they go from you know,
Speaker 1: kind of conservative and moderate too. Yeah, it gets pretty
Speaker 1: skimpy around the nineties. Okay, so let's talk about these ants.
Speaker 1: So the premise the set, the if aunt man's power
Speaker 1: set is shrinking and controlling ants, right, and they how
Speaker 1: do they explain it that the helmet somehow amidst frequencies
Speaker 1: or pheromones or something like that that allow him to
Speaker 1: control ants movements basically like he's like playing a video game, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the way that they showed in the movie is
Speaker 1: like Hank pim even whereas like kind of like it
Speaker 1: looks like a hearing aid, but it's actually like his
Speaker 1: little controller, right. Yeah, it's like a what a cybernetic helmet.
Speaker 1: I think it's sometimes explained, but but again this, yeah,
Speaker 1: this gets kind of iffy as to how he's actually
Speaker 1: controlling them because when it comes to ant communication, Um,
Speaker 1: most of this is happening via those pheromones, Like you say,
Speaker 1: it's chemical messages detected by other ants through their antenna.
Speaker 1: And then this is supported by tactile acoustic and least
Speaker 1: of all a little visual communication. So we're talking a
Speaker 1: high pitched chirps strokes with the antenna and for like
Speaker 1: vibration and how's a helmet going to manage all effect? Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is from the comics too. I mean they definitely
Speaker 1: build this into the ant Man character in the comics
Speaker 1: pretty early because I think that that was how their
Speaker 1: explanation basically for how he got around was that like
Speaker 1: he wrote around on ants with wings and that's how
Speaker 1: he got from one place to another at tiny size.
Speaker 1: The interesting part is that if you're looking at it
Speaker 1: as aunt man manipulating the ants and winning their aid, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, by making them believe that he's some sort
Speaker 1: of privileged aunt um there, we actually see versions of
Speaker 1: this in the natural world. He's he's not the first
Speaker 1: organism to trick ants into doing his bidding. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: guessing this is stuff to blow your minds from guessing
Speaker 1: a parasite's going to come into play here, you know it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: particular type of specialized inverberate parasite. They're known that they're
Speaker 1: generally known on grouped together as remcca files or ant lovers,
Speaker 1: and so what they've done is they've they've they tricked
Speaker 1: the ant population into accepting or overlooking their intrusion. And
Speaker 1: there was a two thousand fifteen study published in Plos
Speaker 1: One that that examined a particular species of beetle Pepa
Speaker 1: vary And uh, this particular beetle makes its home inside
Speaker 1: an ant colony, and you know, a heavily guarded, nearly
Speaker 1: impenetrable fortress that has all of these resources. It seems
Speaker 1: like the most dangerous place in the world as as
Speaker 1: another insect to try and carve out your livelihood. It's
Speaker 1: like trying to live in more door right as a hobbit,
Speaker 1: and just like stealing food here and there and just
Speaker 1: convincing everyone that you're supposed to. Yeah. So this particular beetle,
Speaker 1: it seems to achieve this through a complex dance of
Speaker 1: both chemical and auditory mimicry. So it convinces the ant
Speaker 1: it's one of them, even as it feeds on their
Speaker 1: larva and benefits from the colony's protection. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it seems like this this beetle may even
Speaker 1: mimic the queen from time to time in order to
Speaker 1: receive royal treatment from the surrounding colony. It's like backrubs
Speaker 1: and stuff. Yeah, or you know, just special protection, special
Speaker 1: special feeding privileges. But but it also knows the limits,
Speaker 1: like you know, otherwise it leaves the queen unharmed. It
Speaker 1: knows that's a line it can't cross. So it doesn't
Speaker 1: seek to decimate the host colony, but rather to thrive
Speaker 1: within it as a you know, a perfect parasitic member society.
Speaker 1: Right if it started to disintegrate it from within, they'd
Speaker 1: probably catch on. Yeah, so I could see I could
Speaker 1: see you aunt Man working along those lines. Okay, So
Speaker 1: there's a scene in aunt Man which is super Exposition
Speaker 1: where they're basically like training him how to use his powers,
Speaker 1: and Michael Douglas has hank him does this thing where
Speaker 1: he's like, okay, these are like your allies. There's this
Speaker 1: kind of ant, and this kind of ant, this ants
Speaker 1: really really good for flying on and this ant's going
Speaker 1: to build a bridge for you. And this ant stings
Speaker 1: really hard, right, Like they all have kind of their
Speaker 1: own superpower that he can apply in various situations. In fact,
Speaker 1: there's one and they're one that like absorbs electricity or
Speaker 1: some thing like that. Yeah. Yeah, the crazy ants um
Speaker 1: which I'll go and talk about the crazy ant a
Speaker 1: little bit here. Um, the one that we're most familiar
Speaker 1: with here in the Estates is the crazy Raspberry ant.
Speaker 1: And this one continues to make the news, is that
Speaker 1: you know, invades Texas and Florida. It rolls over fire
Speaker 1: ant populations. Actually like they end up wiping those guys out,
Speaker 1: which it might seem like that's a that's good because
Speaker 1: the crazy ants don't have that painful sting. You don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about your toddler wandering out and encountering
Speaker 1: them so much. But they do have a tendency to
Speaker 1: just overwhelm home. They'll short out electrical boxes and crawl
Speaker 1: up into your computer and short that out too, And
Speaker 1: it's still kind of an open question is to why
Speaker 1: they seem to crave electricity. But some species of ants
Speaker 1: are capable of detecting electromatic magnetic fields and might even
Speaker 1: use the earth magnetic field as a navigational tool. And
Speaker 1: the speculation the birds can do that as well. YEA, yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's like that that's a whole another like realm
Speaker 1: of sensory realm that we as humans just don't have
Speaker 1: access to, right, so there would be a good ally
Speaker 1: to have down there at at this the smaller level
Speaker 1: of existence. But there's also the theory that crazy ants
Speaker 1: just mistake the fields associated with electoral electoral gadgetry as
Speaker 1: road signs. But it's also possible that they're just scouting
Speaker 1: a new nest and hey, you look at a computer
Speaker 1: right here. It's better. It's a dry interior, there are
Speaker 1: fewer entry points and exit points. It's just a great
Speaker 1: place by their estimation to secure a stronghold. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Yeah, so you know, I could see
Speaker 1: them making good allies. But again, with any of these
Speaker 1: these ant examples, you also have to say, how is
Speaker 1: how is aunt Man convincing them to do all these
Speaker 1: operations so far away from their colony. Yeah, you've seen
Speaker 1: it more recently than me. I'm trying to remember how
Speaker 1: he uses the ants. It's like when he's breaking into
Speaker 1: the super secure facility, he's somehow crazy short out the
Speaker 1: system to force field or whatever it is it's keeping
Speaker 1: him from getting out. Okay, Well, then there's the bridge
Speaker 1: building ants. Uh. And I have to say I really
Speaker 1: liked the UM the special effects for how they did
Speaker 1: the ants in particular. Yeah, they would have favorite parts
Speaker 1: of the movie. UM, But the bridge bundling ants. That's
Speaker 1: for real. Um fire ants can act like either a
Speaker 1: fluid or a solid. In fact, I think we did
Speaker 1: something on how stuff works now about this recently and
Speaker 1: like the last month. It might have been Lauren vocal
Speaker 1: bobs um. I'll make sure to link to that on
Speaker 1: the land because it's cool. There's some cool videos from
Speaker 1: the studies that these guys have been doing. In fact,
Speaker 1: they're right down the street over at Georgia Tech. Guys
Speaker 1: Jong Yang Liu and David Hugh have observed this, this
Speaker 1: fluid solid shifting back and forth between Now it's not
Speaker 1: one fire ants shifting back and forth between states. It's
Speaker 1: a whole colony of them. But they can basically pour
Speaker 1: themselves out like a liquid or spring back when something
Speaker 1: presses down on them. In fact, in the video they
Speaker 1: show like it's not like a brick, but it's something
Speaker 1: heavy and they're pushing down fifty ants, and the ants
Speaker 1: all kind of like spring back and forth to allow
Speaker 1: for that pushing. Um So fire ants. The reason why
Speaker 1: they have this ability is they have to cope with
Speaker 1: periodic downpours in their natural environment, so they evolved the
Speaker 1: ability to clump together into structures and so um liu
Speaker 1: and who are using rheometers, which are used to measure
Speaker 1: the flow of liquids or slurries like cement, uh, to
Speaker 1: to measure the viscosity and the elasticity of these balls
Speaker 1: of ants. And they found out that these fire ants
Speaker 1: can flow and move around as a group, acting like
Speaker 1: like thick fluid, right or or or like rubber in
Speaker 1: some instances. And yes, they construct bridges to get across
Speaker 1: gaps in the same way that you see them do
Speaker 1: this in the in the movie. UH. They can also
Speaker 1: quickly repair any damage to the structure they create. Right. So,
Speaker 1: like let's say they make a bridge and like a
Speaker 1: rock falls and it kills like ten of the ants. Well,
Speaker 1: the other ants are all they're all gonna sense this
Speaker 1: and reinforce the living structure and move in um. The
Speaker 1: researchers actually subjected them to different vibrations to cause them
Speaker 1: to spring into action and fix the bridge at different frequencies. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they also pull closer to each other and tighten
Speaker 1: their grip to fill in holes make sure that the
Speaker 1: structure holds together. The practical implications here, apparently are that
Speaker 1: they're trying to figure out, well, how do these ants
Speaker 1: do this, so we can replicate it and make self
Speaker 1: assembling robots. So that would be fairly interesting if we
Speaker 1: had these little, tiny ant sized robots that could, you know,
Speaker 1: theoretically form bridges for us to drive across or something.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not quite sure how they would pull
Speaker 1: it off. It sounds like we're years away from something
Speaker 1: like that. It would be pretty cool. Yeah that that,
Speaker 1: I mean you basically have like a T one thousand
Speaker 1: kind of Yeah, that's what they compare it to. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so like the theory is, well, it's not a theory
Speaker 1: that they show this in the video. Actually, if you
Speaker 1: drop a penny into a quote ocean of ants, you've
Speaker 1: just got this pile of ants. They absorbed the impact
Speaker 1: of the penny dropping that, catching it and then slowly
Speaker 1: lowering it to the bottom of whatever they're in. Uh.
Speaker 1: And these live ants will even let go and behave
Speaker 1: like they're dead in some instances. So they can help
Speaker 1: decrease the viscosity of the overall ant structure and allow
Speaker 1: it to have more of a liquid flow to it.
Speaker 1: So that part of the science bridge building ants. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for real cool And that actually lines up rather nicely
Speaker 1: with the raft building ants that we also see this
Speaker 1: is I think the way that he infiltrates High Security
Speaker 1: lab is that he goes in through the water pipes
Speaker 1: and you're riding a raft made up of ants joined
Speaker 1: together into a little structure. And we actually see this,
Speaker 1: uh with a number of different ants. They bind together
Speaker 1: into a raft when cataclysmic floods threatened the colony. And
Speaker 1: you know, they do this pretty much in the same
Speaker 1: way you've described the formation of these bridges. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: but you get into a question like, well, how how
Speaker 1: do you build that structure? I mean, how do you
Speaker 1: arrange it? And that gets really interested, Right, how do
Speaker 1: you decide who's the one which which aunt has to
Speaker 1: be underwater and drowned? Yeah, I mean imagine say any
Speaker 1: group of people, you know, the crew of a pirate ship,
Speaker 1: and the ship's thinking and they're like, all right, made,
Speaker 1: he's buying together because we're going to form ourselves a
Speaker 1: new both made out of your body. So then you know,
Speaker 1: what do you do? Castraws to see who's going to
Speaker 1: be at the bottom is going to get to be
Speaker 1: on top? Well, there's a cool study that looked into this.
Speaker 1: The two thousand fourteen study from Jessica Purcell at the
Speaker 1: University of Lasagne, and she took a closer look at
Speaker 1: the rafts physical and social structure. Specifically, she looked at
Speaker 1: the functional geometry of rafts in the ant for micah Cell, yes,
Speaker 1: these are ants that are a bundant in the floodplains
Speaker 1: throughout the Apps and the Pyrenees. Unsurprisingly, the queen occupies
Speaker 1: the center of the raft. She's the most important, she's
Speaker 1: the package, she is the the ant man of this, uh,
Speaker 1: this particular raft. Okay, so this is a scenario where
Speaker 1: he's probably making them think he's the queen. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would imagine he would have to convince them Ham the queen,
Speaker 1: I'm important. You've gotta get me through. So take tangled
Speaker 1: worker ants then make up the outside of the raft.
Speaker 1: And this might come as a shock, but Larval ant
Speaker 1: that larval aunt brood makes up the lowest portions of
Speaker 1: the craft, so they put the essentially put the babies
Speaker 1: on the bottom, which you wouldn't expect. But yeah, but
Speaker 1: Lussain found that since the brood the larva are the
Speaker 1: most buoyant members of the colony, they actually survive exceedingly
Speaker 1: well down there and ultimately work really well float and
Speaker 1: so their survival rate is on was on par with
Speaker 1: the rest of the crew, and when brood items were
Speaker 1: not available to to build the lower portion of the raft,
Speaker 1: the worker ants formed the bottom of the raft as well.
Speaker 1: But they also presume proved a rather resistant to drowning,
Speaker 1: but required extended recovery time upon landing. So it's it's
Speaker 1: it's interesting to imagine these ants and think of the
Speaker 1: dances as this last ditch survival effort. You just bound
Speaker 1: bind together into this this raft, this arc when you're
Speaker 1: delivered to this new location and then everybody just starts
Speaker 1: setting up a Wow. Yeah, just the social communication and
Speaker 1: decision making amongst ants is so alien and uh just
Speaker 1: alien to how we think about things. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: when I see ants come into my home through the window,
Speaker 1: sill up onto the kitchen counter, and I kind of
Speaker 1: think about this stuff. Then it's like how do they
Speaker 1: how they decide who's the one? Like my wife's really
Speaker 1: into the like uh non chemical application of like put
Speaker 1: cinnamon across the window cells because they really don't like cinnamon.
Speaker 1: Some of them like force their way through the cinnamon
Speaker 1: and get like cough, they cough, they cough, yea ants cough.
Speaker 1: They get covered in this stuff and then you can
Speaker 1: see them kind of immobile. But the others are like, great,
Speaker 1: they've made a path for me. I can move on
Speaker 1: through these make these decisions. Yeah, it's crazy. I feel
Speaker 1: like we every year there seems like dozens of new
Speaker 1: ants studies come out. They're always just some really fascinating,
Speaker 1: really mind blowing bits in there. Like the most recent
Speaker 1: one that we did a Now video on had to
Speaker 1: do with lazy ants. So these ants that are in
Speaker 1: the colony and they seem to just be standing around
Speaker 1: doing nothing, and the scientists were trying to figuet why
Speaker 1: are they doing nothing? Are they Is there something wrong here? Um?
Speaker 1: Are they reserve troops? That seemed to be a prime theory.
Speaker 1: So the one theory was that maybe they were laying communications. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I would think, But they're not. It turns
Speaker 1: out there less in tune with what's going on in
Speaker 1: the colony than anybody else interest in. Huh, Yeah, they
Speaker 1: just completely tuned out. Okay, so we've covered parasites, we've
Speaker 1: covered bridge building, we've covered the electricity. Uh, but what
Speaker 1: was the stinger ant? That was the bullet ant right,
Speaker 1: like their their their bite is particularly bad. And that's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we went into that in the Ignoble episode. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. I forgot all about that. Joe covered that section.
Speaker 1: So if you want, if you're saying I want to
Speaker 1: know more about those bulls of ants, go back to
Speaker 1: our Ignobel Prize episodes from I Believe November and check
Speaker 1: those out. And there's one thing about the ants too
Speaker 1: that I don't have in my notes here, but I
Speaker 1: read it extensively in almost every article about ant man
Speaker 1: in the Science of ant Man, which is that they
Speaker 1: get the gender of the ants wrong because well or
Speaker 1: just aunt Man himself isn't giving male names to female
Speaker 1: ants because he isn't. His His buddy aunt is Anthony,
Speaker 1: and they they're saying like Anthony would actually be a
Speaker 1: female aunt because of its particular kind of anatomy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know. I'll buy into that, because what
Speaker 1: does he know about ants? Yeah, he didn't really seem
Speaker 1: to have a whole lot of idea about what was
Speaker 1: going on there. You think he'd do some research, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like we did that. Yah. Yeah, that's perfect. I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to seeing more of him in these like I
Speaker 1: think he's going to be in that Captain American movie
Speaker 1: next year to that, and Corey Stall was really good
Speaker 1: as the villain. Yeah, Corey Stall from The Strange. We
Speaker 1: also did a Science of episode. Course. Style seems to
Speaker 1: be finding himself cast in a lot of movies where
Speaker 1: movies or television they're like kind of sci fi. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's it's kind of in the mix somehow. He's always
Speaker 1: like a he was a straight up villain in this,
Speaker 1: but it's sort of like an anti hero. And in
Speaker 1: his other protagonist role, Yeah, he's good at playing In
Speaker 1: House of Cards, he was he played a flawed alcoholic
Speaker 1: character in that, and then he kind of plays the
Speaker 1: same thing in the Strain. So he's great at at
Speaker 1: playing these, uh, these characters with they are fairly cardboard
Speaker 1: but also have a certain amount of nuance to them.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he made for a fun villain. And I
Speaker 1: like this little zapper that he used one particularly menacing. Yeah. Alright,
Speaker 1: So there you have it. Just to breakdown of some
Speaker 1: of the science in ant Man, the film, the comic
Speaker 1: book series, and also touching on some of these examples
Speaker 1: of miniaturization science fiction. Obviously, we didn't touch on absolutely everything,
Speaker 1: uh from ant man or miniaturization side by, So we
Speaker 1: would love to hear from everybody out there. What's your
Speaker 1: favorite piece of ministuration media? Uh, what are your thoughts
Speaker 1: on the science of aunt Man? Yeah, and let us
Speaker 1: know about this stuff on social media. When this episode
Speaker 1: comes out, we're going to share it all over the place,
Speaker 1: but we will also be responding to and listening to
Speaker 1: your comments there. Uh, you can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
Speaker 1: all those we are Blow the Mind, and as always
Speaker 1: check out stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That
Speaker 1: is where you will find all the podcast episodes, all
Speaker 1: those blog posts of some videos, and links out to
Speaker 1: the social media accounts. And finally, if you want to
Speaker 1: just talk to us directly about aunt Man or whatever
Speaker 1: we've covered on the podcast recently, don't forget to tune
Speaker 1: into those periscope shows on Friday's at noon Eastern Standard time.
Speaker 1: Will be around for twenty or thirty minutes, talking science,
Speaker 1: talking horror movies. Usually we end up talking about some
Speaker 1: kind of Monster of the Week type scenario. And as always,
Speaker 1: you to get in touch with this fee email just
Speaker 1: shoot his one at Blow the Mind at how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works For more on this and basands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is It How stuff Works dot com