WEBVTT - The Science of 'Ant-Man' 0:00:01.080 --> 0:00:05.600 Exitement. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from housetop 0:00:05.680 --> 0:00:14.840 Works dot com. Hey you wasn't a stuff to Blow 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:17.360 your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Seger, 0:00:17.440 --> 0:00:20.919 and today we're gonna be talking about it Man, the 0:00:21.000 --> 0:00:24.360 famous tiny little superhero who was on the big screen 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:27.720 over the summer, and about the science behind it miniaturization 0:00:28.120 --> 0:00:31.479 and it's all different kinds of crazy, wacky science things 0:00:31.520 --> 0:00:33.600 that are actually some are true and some are not. 0:00:33.920 --> 0:00:36.040 Before we get into that, though, I want to remind 0:00:36.080 --> 0:00:39.880 the audience that we do more than just podcast. 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It's a great way to 0:01:13.160 --> 0:01:16.760 support our show. And one last thing, we have started 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:20.880 working on the other social media platform called Periscope. We've 0:01:20.880 --> 0:01:22.720 been doing it for about, I guess two months now, 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:26.399 and we try every Friday at noon Eastern Standard time 0:01:26.680 --> 0:01:29.319 to be available for about twenty or thirty minutes hang 0:01:29.319 --> 0:01:31.840 out with our audience, talk to you about what's going 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:34.600 on with the show, what we're recording, what we're researching, 0:01:34.760 --> 0:01:36.839 and what we have coming up in the next couple 0:01:36.840 --> 0:01:39.959 of weeks. So, uh, we won't be on We're currently 0:01:40.000 --> 0:01:42.600 recording this right before Christmas, so it's gonna be a 0:01:42.720 --> 0:01:46.520 little bit uh off schedule. But once we get past 0:01:46.560 --> 0:01:48.400 the new year, I think we'll we'll get back onto 0:01:48.400 --> 0:01:51.600 that Friday schedule. All right, well, let's launch into it. 0:01:51.680 --> 0:01:54.600 We're talking about aunt Man. We're talking about aunts, We're 0:01:54.600 --> 0:02:00.800 talking about the possible science of miniaturization. Uh. Aunt Man, 0:02:00.840 --> 0:02:04.480 of course, is the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe movie to 0:02:04.560 --> 0:02:08.080 come out came out here in as of this recording. 0:02:08.160 --> 0:02:12.840 It has just hit the digital streaming market and I 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:15.400 believe it's it's either out on DVD and Blu Ray 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:18.520 now or it will be very soon. I believe you 0:02:18.520 --> 0:02:20.320 saw in the theater. I did. I saw it in 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:23.919 the theater. I'm, as many of our listeners know, a 0:02:24.000 --> 0:02:28.160 huge comic book fan and try to support comic book movies. 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:30.240 For the most part. I was a little bit on 0:02:30.280 --> 0:02:32.440 the fence about this one, to be honest, but I 0:02:32.440 --> 0:02:35.280 did go see it in the theater. Col I liked it. Okay, 0:02:35.400 --> 0:02:38.000 it wasn't like my favorite or anything, but but the 0:02:38.080 --> 0:02:41.960 science was particularly interesting. Yeah, the science was. I just 0:02:42.000 --> 0:02:44.560 saw it last week and I really enjoyed it. I was. 0:02:44.720 --> 0:02:47.400 I definitely came into it not you know, I wasn't 0:02:47.400 --> 0:02:49.560 certain what to expect because on one hand, I don't 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:52.359 have any real attachment to Aunt Man and I, even 0:02:52.360 --> 0:02:56.839 though I love miniaturization science fiction as well discussed um, Yeah, 0:02:56.880 --> 0:02:59.240 I was kind of like, well, not enough that he's 0:02:59.240 --> 0:03:01.000 little one, does you have to talk to aunts too? 0:03:01.400 --> 0:03:03.440 And then I also had been following some of the 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:06.160 production history with that being part of it and not 0:03:06.200 --> 0:03:08.720 being a part of it. That was part of my hesitant. Yeah. 0:03:09.000 --> 0:03:10.720 The reason why I was hesitant to see it was 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:13.880 I'm a big egg right fan, and I had followed 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:15.440 you know, we don't need to go into all that here, 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:17.440 but I kind of followed the troubled production of this 0:03:17.520 --> 0:03:20.160 movie and was really looking forward to his take on 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:23.440 the character. Um, but I think that there's some glimmers 0:03:23.560 --> 0:03:26.200 of his voice in that movie still, I think so. Yeah. 0:03:26.280 --> 0:03:28.639 And and Joe Cornish to the guy who did attack 0:03:28.639 --> 0:03:31.720 the Block, also helped work on this, right, Yeah, I thought. 0:03:31.720 --> 0:03:33.600 I thought the end result was a heck of a 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:36.120 lot of fun. I enjoy it, And after I saw it, 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:39.040 I said, hey, let's uh flu this. Let's let's do 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:41.000 an episode that I was a big nerd. So so 0:03:41.240 --> 0:03:43.560 here's the thing, like, for this episode, I'm gonna try 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:47.840 to restrain my comic nerd. Um. I am gonna probably 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:50.200 cover the segment on just sort of how comic book 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:53.240 aunt Man compares to to movie aunt Man, and I'll 0:03:53.240 --> 0:03:56.280 probably interject here there. But Robert's gonna keep me on track, 0:03:56.400 --> 0:03:59.000 and we're in a drastic to the science of this, 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:02.960 because there's some really fascinating stuff that you know, honestly, 0:04:03.000 --> 0:04:05.280 like approaching this, didn't think was gonna turn out to 0:04:05.280 --> 0:04:08.360 be true. Yeah, Yeah, it's it's it's it's kind of 0:04:08.360 --> 0:04:10.600 funny how much how much great science there is in 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:13.760 the film. Uh, So just just start off, let's talk 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:18.000 a little bit about miniaturization science fiction itself, because this 0:04:18.279 --> 0:04:20.960 provides sort of the soil from which ant Man it 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:26.480 initially emerges, and then the latest incarnation the film also, uh, 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:30.440 comes out of this history. Yeah, there's a fascination I 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:32.680 think that probably popped up in the late fifties and 0:04:32.800 --> 0:04:35.039 early sixties, which is when ant Man the comic was 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:39.680 created with the idea of shrinking and or growing things. Right, 0:04:39.720 --> 0:04:44.080 we were fascinated with giant ants and bugs and stuff 0:04:44.080 --> 0:04:47.080 being monsters in horror movies. And yeah, and I think 0:04:47.080 --> 0:04:50.200 a lot of this comes out of increased awareness of 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:54.320 what's going on at the smaller levels of nature and uh, 0:04:54.360 --> 0:04:57.160 and also our ability to share that with the general population. 0:04:57.279 --> 0:04:59.719 People were able to see these close up photos and 0:04:59.720 --> 0:05:04.160 their and learning about our our continuing exploration of these 0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:07.400 tiny realms. So one of the one of the big 0:05:07.400 --> 0:05:09.760 ones that we have to mention is, of course Richard 0:05:09.800 --> 0:05:13.440 Matheson's novel The Shrinking Man and the subsequent nine seven 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:17.159 movie The Incredible Shrinking Man. And I've read I don't 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:18.840 know how this matches up with the timeline. I've read 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:22.440 that these were supposedly a big influence on on Hank 0:05:22.480 --> 0:05:27.200 Pim the Hand character about his first adventure in which 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:29.680 he what he falls into an aunt hill. Yeah, that's 0:05:29.720 --> 0:05:32.280 the first, uh, the first comic that they did at 0:05:32.320 --> 0:05:34.200 Marvel with him. And I don't even know if he 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:36.440 was necessarily a superhero at that point. I think it 0:05:36.480 --> 0:05:39.080 was just kind of a you know, scientists, mad Science 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:42.600 Gonna rise story. But yeah, man, Richard Matheson, Like when 0:05:42.640 --> 0:05:44.479 you go back and look at that guy's resume, he 0:05:44.600 --> 0:05:47.000 influenced so much pop culture. Oh yeah, he did. And 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:48.720 of course we have to mention the nineteen sixty six 0:05:48.720 --> 0:05:52.359 film Fantastic Voyage, in which a tiny submarine that contains 0:05:52.600 --> 0:05:56.919 a miniaturized Raquel Welch and a miniaturized Donald Pleasants and 0:05:57.040 --> 0:06:00.760 some other people that of varying importance, and they are 0:06:00.800 --> 0:06:03.200 you know, sent into the bloodstream, going in there to 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:06.200 address an illness at a at a at a very 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:10.520 small scale. Yeah, there's there's there is a fascination like 0:06:10.680 --> 0:06:14.800 with this shrinking and growing thing, right, like the ones 0:06:14.839 --> 0:06:17.680 that I remember more often, the the growing ones, like 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:20.120 Attack of the fifty Foot Woman. That's one, right, that 0:06:20.200 --> 0:06:23.599 was one of those big movies of the time, Amazing 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:29.880 Colossal Man that was another giant them wash um. Now, 0:06:29.920 --> 0:06:33.960 of course, Fantastic Voyage itself kind of spins off into 0:06:34.000 --> 0:06:37.560 its own little franchise. Isaac Asimov did the novelization in 0:06:37.560 --> 0:06:40.479 the nineteen sixty six and we'll discuss some of his 0:06:40.600 --> 0:06:43.360 science City and jacks into the franchise in a bit. 0:06:43.560 --> 0:06:47.080 He also did a Fantastic Voyage to Destination Brain in 0:06:47.200 --> 0:06:51.400 eighties seven. I read the former novel, but I remember 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:54.000 trying to read the second one. I was like in 0:06:54.080 --> 0:06:55.400 junior high at the time, and I think I just 0:06:55.440 --> 0:06:57.599 kind of timed out on some of the science again 0:06:57.640 --> 0:07:00.279 at the time. I should give it another read. Um. 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:04.760 Kevin J. Anderson did Fantastic Voyage Microcosm much later, in 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:08.320 which the crew explores the body of a dead alien. Wow. 0:07:08.480 --> 0:07:11.760 That sounds interesting, and I was. I was surprised to 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:14.200 hear that in sixty eight there was a Fantastic Voyage 0:07:14.240 --> 0:07:16.640 animated series. I don't think I've ever seen a clip 0:07:16.640 --> 0:07:19.520 of this hadn't either. Yeah, that's in fact, like my 0:07:19.760 --> 0:07:23.160 knowledge of the whole Fantastic Voyage, you know, franchise is 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:25.920 rather limited. This sounds like a treasure trove of stuff 0:07:25.960 --> 0:07:28.000 to go back to. Yeah, and then of course Fantastic 0:07:28.040 --> 0:07:33.960 Voyage itself directly influenced the fabulous nine film Interspace, And 0:07:34.040 --> 0:07:35.840 this is the one I remember from growing up. I 0:07:35.920 --> 0:07:39.040 was ten when this came out and they hadn't I 0:07:39.080 --> 0:07:41.400 want to say it was like Universal Studios or something 0:07:41.440 --> 0:07:42.920 like that. When I was a kid had an Inner 0:07:42.920 --> 0:07:45.400 Space ride and it was like one of those things 0:07:45.400 --> 0:07:47.360 where you you went into a room with like shaky 0:07:47.400 --> 0:07:50.520 seats and you basically watched a movie where like Martin 0:07:50.560 --> 0:07:53.080 Short or somebody walked you through as you went through 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:56.360 the body. You know. Um, that was pretty cool. Yeah, 0:07:56.400 --> 0:07:58.960 it's a It was a great film I remember to 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:01.000 watch as a kid because you had all the you know, 0:08:01.000 --> 0:08:04.520 you had all this Martin Short manic stuff. Dennis Quaid 0:08:04.560 --> 0:08:08.040 was Dennis Quaid was was miniaturized in this cool little 0:08:08.040 --> 0:08:11.320 submarine in Martin Short. And then in the climax that 0:08:11.400 --> 0:08:14.040 I just I must have watched dozens of times as 0:08:14.080 --> 0:08:17.720 a kid. You had the bad guys miniaturized as well 0:08:17.840 --> 0:08:20.440 in his own little robot suit and they do battle 0:08:20.880 --> 0:08:24.040 in uh in the stomach. It's cool to aunt man 0:08:24.400 --> 0:08:26.960 in a way. Yeah, they didn't really go in anybody's body. 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:29.720 In aunt Man, for the most part, it's because he's 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:33.920 ant sized and not like they're like microscopic, and yeah, 0:08:33.920 --> 0:08:36.880 they're much smaller, but but very similar, especially when you 0:08:36.880 --> 0:08:41.160 get into the battling chokh And then of course Fantastic 0:08:41.240 --> 0:08:45.000 Voyage and Inner Space went on to influence. Uh. There's 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:49.640 a Futurama episode par Parasites Lost. Uh you remember this one. 0:08:49.679 --> 0:08:52.240 This is where Fry gets intestinal worms from eating a 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:54.440 I think like a tuna fish sandwich that he buys 0:08:54.480 --> 0:08:58.439 from a condom machine and galactic trucks. Always a bad idea, 0:08:58.920 --> 0:09:02.680 but that's that's a great miniaturization episode. There's a wonderful 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:06.800 Rick and Morty episode titled Anatomy Park. Yeah. I can 0:09:06.840 --> 0:09:12.120 only imagine the mind of Dan Harmon at work on 0:09:12.240 --> 0:09:15.320 something like that. Sounds like a Jurassic Park. Honey, I 0:09:15.320 --> 0:09:17.880 shrunk the kids mash up. Yeah, yeah, but pretty much 0:09:17.920 --> 0:09:21.160 it's well, it's it's it's kind of a Fantastic Voyage 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:24.319 meets a neat Jurassic Parks. So we have all these 0:09:24.360 --> 0:09:26.680 deadly viruses that are kept in kind of a Jurassic 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:30.960 Park inside the body of kind. I think it's an alcoholic, 0:09:31.040 --> 0:09:35.040 homeless Santa Claus, and then you get you get yourself miniaturized, 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:36.520 and then you go and visit and you can meet 0:09:36.520 --> 0:09:39.439 all these terrible, you know, pathogens. Yeah, this sounds like 0:09:39.520 --> 0:09:42.880 Dan Harmon with an unlimited budget. So and then I 0:09:42.960 --> 0:09:45.640 just mentioned Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, which is you 0:09:45.679 --> 0:09:47.800 know what, were there three of those movies or something 0:09:47.800 --> 0:09:49.840 like that. I can't remember, but yeah, there was they 0:09:49.840 --> 0:09:52.000 shrunk the kid and then they blew up the baby 0:09:52.360 --> 0:09:54.240 something like that, and then I don't remember. I think 0:09:54.240 --> 0:09:55.760 there was a third bit. I never said. They were 0:09:55.760 --> 0:09:58.559 definitely again, like I want to say that those came 0:09:58.600 --> 0:10:01.520 out sometime in my three teen years or something like that, 0:10:01.559 --> 0:10:03.360 so I remember seeing them, but I don't remember a 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:06.040 lot about them. It was that sort of arrow when 0:10:06.080 --> 0:10:09.160 like c G I was was just really starting to 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:13.360 become convincing. So the idea of Rick moranis getting shrunken 0:10:13.400 --> 0:10:16.520 down into his front yard and having to travel around 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:19.839 with all the Yeah I believe aunts again answered like 0:10:20.160 --> 0:10:23.839 the go to for this miniaturization thing. Yeah, I mean, because, 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:26.240 as we'll discuss in the second half of this episode, 0:10:26.400 --> 0:10:29.440 there are so fascinating and their world is is just 0:10:29.559 --> 0:10:33.400 so alien and an an intricate that we we can't 0:10:33.400 --> 0:10:36.560 help but imagine ourselves immersed in it. And then you 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:39.960 know this, a lot of this spawned into and also 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:42.920 out of comic books. There is as much of a 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:46.040 fascination with miniaturization and comics as there is in film 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:49.560 and television from that time. So you've got aunt Man. Uh. 0:10:49.920 --> 0:10:51.920 D C has their version of aunt Man, which is 0:10:51.920 --> 0:10:55.400 the atom uh. And then uh, the ant Man has 0:10:55.480 --> 0:10:59.480 his wife, the Wasp. Uh well sometimes wife, sometimes not wife. 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:01.800 I'll talk about that in a little bit. And uh, 0:11:01.880 --> 0:11:03.640 there's there's all kinds of other series. In fact, there 0:11:03.679 --> 0:11:05.880 was even I think in the eighties there was a 0:11:05.920 --> 0:11:10.640 series called Micronots that was about like, uh like it 0:11:10.720 --> 0:11:13.040 was sort of like Star Wars meets ant Man, right, 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:15.360 Like the idea was like they they lived in this 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:20.439 tiny micro verse that was so small it was completely 0:11:20.760 --> 0:11:23.480 like it was sort of like the quantum realm from 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:27.680 aunt Man. All right, well, tell me about aunt Man. 0:11:28.600 --> 0:11:31.040 I'm coming at it as a guy who basically knows 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:33.079 what I saw in the film and you know, skimming 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:37.000 a few uh you know, comic wiki pages about him. 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:39.960 Give me the full story. So ant Man is created 0:11:40.200 --> 0:11:44.520 in nineteen sixty two at Marvel Comics by the usual 0:11:44.559 --> 0:11:48.520 suspect Stanley and Jack Kirby, also with some help from 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:53.720 Larry Lieber, who is Stanley's brother. Uh. And basically it's 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:57.520 the character has usually been the version that Michael Douglas 0:11:57.559 --> 0:12:01.880 portrays in the movie right, the older heck Pim character, 0:12:02.240 --> 0:12:05.480 except for he's not older in the in the original comics. UM. 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:08.400 But the gist is he's a super scientist who fights crime. 0:12:08.559 --> 0:12:12.120 The way he does it is he has these PIM 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:16.000 particles that he's invented that enable him to shunt his 0:12:16.160 --> 0:12:20.040 mass or gain mass from an alternate dimension. Uh, and 0:12:20.400 --> 0:12:23.600 he either shrinks or he gets big. And he used 0:12:23.640 --> 0:12:27.079 to like swallow capsules. I think when they first came out, Um, 0:12:27.320 --> 0:12:29.679 then he breathed in particle filled gas. I think that's 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:32.440 why that the helmet. Then helmet sort of has like 0:12:32.480 --> 0:12:36.280 a gas mask look to it. And then eventually, if 0:12:36.320 --> 0:12:40.040 I remember the cannon correctly, there's something about how his 0:12:40.120 --> 0:12:43.360 body absorbed the PIM particles, so he was basically just 0:12:43.440 --> 0:12:46.440 producing them on his own, and he could at will 0:12:46.520 --> 0:12:48.760 shrink or grow, and he could also like shrink or 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:52.480 grow other objects nearby him. Or other people. Okay, so 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:54.640 is it kind of like the whole Spider Man deal 0:12:54.720 --> 0:12:58.160 where at times Spider Man is shooting webs because he's 0:12:58.200 --> 0:13:00.960 made fantastic little devices. In other times it becomes more 0:13:01.000 --> 0:13:05.360 a part of who he is physically. Uh No, I 0:13:05.400 --> 0:13:08.440 think it's like because those are two like this is 0:13:08.440 --> 0:13:12.080 super nerdy, but that the comic book version is the 0:13:12.120 --> 0:13:15.280 one with the web shooters. The movie version is the 0:13:15.280 --> 0:13:17.839 one where it shoots out organically. Okay, so he never 0:13:17.880 --> 0:13:20.680 shoots it out organically in the comics. They they reckcondit 0:13:21.120 --> 0:13:24.120 later on in like the two thousands for a series 0:13:24.120 --> 0:13:27.640 called Ultimate Spider Man. But yes, so in this case, 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:29.200 I think it was like sort of the same character 0:13:29.240 --> 0:13:33.320 in the same universe, but he just you know, over time, 0:13:33.360 --> 0:13:36.880 they're like capsules. That's kind of lame. Let's do gas, 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:38.960 we don't. He doesn't need the gas. He can just 0:13:39.080 --> 0:13:43.760 change um. And so the deal was was he was 0:13:43.840 --> 0:13:46.679 aunt Man. He joins the Avengers. He usually teams up 0:13:46.720 --> 0:13:50.160 with his girlfriends, sometimes wife Janet van Dyne, who is 0:13:50.200 --> 0:13:52.720 the Wasp, And in the movie they sort of hint 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:55.800 at that and they show flashbacks to their crime fighting 0:13:55.840 --> 0:14:00.760 career together. The thing about Aunt Man of spoilers for 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:02.960 aunt Man comics that are like, I guess, forty years 0:14:02.960 --> 0:14:06.400 old at this point. But uh, the thing about aunt 0:14:06.440 --> 0:14:09.040 Man that isn't really touched upon in the movies at 0:14:09.040 --> 0:14:13.280 all is that he has tons of different identities. So 0:14:13.360 --> 0:14:16.720 aunt Man isn't just Hank Pim's identity. He also becomes 0:14:16.800 --> 0:14:19.840 Giant Man, where he just grows and smashes things. And 0:14:19.880 --> 0:14:21.960 then I guess he thought Giant Man wasn't a cool 0:14:22.080 --> 0:14:24.520 enough name, so he changes it to Goliath, and then 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:26.720 he changes his name to Yellow Jacket and he starts 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:29.520 shrinking again. Uh. And then there's even a point I 0:14:29.520 --> 0:14:31.480 think it was this was in the two thousands where 0:14:31.520 --> 0:14:36.280 the Wasp died or something, and to honor her memory, 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:38.640 he became the Wasp. So he was like the male 0:14:38.760 --> 0:14:41.000 version of the Wasp, al right, So if he recognized 0:14:41.040 --> 0:14:42.920 that you gotta keep mixing it up, you gotta keep 0:14:43.040 --> 0:14:45.640 reinventing yourself, so much so that like I believe it 0:14:45.760 --> 0:14:47.880 is part of the character's history that he had multiple 0:14:48.560 --> 0:14:51.880 personality disorder because like he was having a difficult time 0:14:52.000 --> 0:14:55.120 tracking all of his secret identities, and something to do 0:14:55.280 --> 0:14:59.240 with the particle ingestion was messing with his mind. So 0:14:59.360 --> 0:15:01.960 like when he the Yellow Jacket character, he's almost like 0:15:01.960 --> 0:15:06.320 a different person um and and sort of a villain. Uh. 0:15:06.360 --> 0:15:09.120 And sometimes he gets brainwashed by villains. Other times he's 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:11.560 replaced by shape shifting aliens. So this character has this 0:15:11.680 --> 0:15:17.960 like really bizarre history of sometimes just being completely aloof 0:15:18.000 --> 0:15:21.040 to what's going on in the rest of the storylines 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:24.240 around him, basically because he's not himself, to the point 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:27.040 that there is a classic storyline in ant Man that 0:15:27.080 --> 0:15:29.600 I'm sure the film producers tried to stay away from 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:33.760 as much as possible, in which aunt Man becomes very 0:15:33.800 --> 0:15:37.520 aggressive in his person persona as Yellow Jacket and has 0:15:37.520 --> 0:15:40.520 a mental breakdown, and when the Wasp tries to intervene 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:43.640 because they're married at this point, he hits her and 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:47.480 is expelled from the Avengers. They end up getting a divorce, uh, 0:15:47.520 --> 0:15:49.080 and then I think, like, you know, maybe twenty or 0:15:49.120 --> 0:15:51.560 thirty years later in the comics they resumed their romance. 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:54.120 But so he's sort of like the ant Man I 0:15:54.160 --> 0:15:56.680 grew up with reading in the eighties was always this 0:15:56.800 --> 0:16:01.720 like disheveled guy who had like in broken because like 0:16:01.840 --> 0:16:04.920 he had this mental breakdown and then like was sort 0:16:04.920 --> 0:16:07.480 of reviled by all the other superheroes because he hit 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:11.120 his wife. Uh oh, and also he is in the 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:14.600 comics the guy who invents Ultron, the big bad robot 0:16:14.640 --> 0:16:18.280 from the Avengers movie. Everybody's like, great, you hit your 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:21.160 wife and you invent this robot that accidentally tries to 0:16:21.240 --> 0:16:23.760 kill us all the time. Okay, So luckily in the 0:16:23.840 --> 0:16:26.240 in the Marvel films, we've gotten to move that off 0:16:26.280 --> 0:16:29.200 and blame that on Tony Stone. Yeah, exactly. They chose 0:16:29.240 --> 0:16:31.160 to get that to Robert Downey Jr. He was already 0:16:31.240 --> 0:16:33.960 charming enough. All right, let's let's get into the movie 0:16:33.960 --> 0:16:37.720 a bit now, before we get into the miniaturization science 0:16:37.760 --> 0:16:41.200 and the quantum physics and the ultimately what we see 0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:43.800 some of the ants doing in the picture. You want 0:16:43.800 --> 0:16:48.120 to touch on some of the just straight up caper science. Yeah, well, 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:50.440 when I was watching it, I was sort of stunned 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:53.480 by the scene. So again, if you haven't seen the movie, 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:55.840 we're gonna spoil the hell out of it this episode. 0:16:55.880 --> 0:16:59.640 But uh, Scott Lang, who is the not aunt man 0:16:59.680 --> 0:17:01.520 at this point. The premise of the movie is that 0:17:01.600 --> 0:17:06.720 Scott Lang breaks into Hank Pim's house to steal the suit. Uh, 0:17:07.359 --> 0:17:10.080 the sort of heisty stuff that he does to get 0:17:10.119 --> 0:17:15.000 in past. His defenses were science in a way. Uh. 0:17:15.040 --> 0:17:16.520 And at the time I was watching it and I 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:19.560 was like, this is completely false, Like there's no way 0:17:19.560 --> 0:17:22.600 that you could get past a fingerprint scanner with super 0:17:22.640 --> 0:17:25.800 glue the way that he does. And in fact, Joe 0:17:25.840 --> 0:17:28.320 and I are working on something right now about forensic 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:32.680 science and superglue. Fuming is a thing that is done 0:17:32.680 --> 0:17:35.920 to gather fingerprint evidence, and so much so that it's 0:17:35.920 --> 0:17:37.399 one of the few ways that you can pull a 0:17:37.440 --> 0:17:41.080 fingerprint off of a dead body. So there is some 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:44.479 science to that, but it's not necessarily. I don't know 0:17:44.520 --> 0:17:47.119 that you could take the superglue itself, reform it and 0:17:47.119 --> 0:17:50.320 then turn it into something that a fingerprint scanner would understand, 0:17:50.960 --> 0:17:52.680 you know, much less do it on a fly like that. 0:17:56.920 --> 0:17:58.560 And I don't even want to get into doesn't he 0:17:58.680 --> 0:18:03.960 like freeze the door somehow to say free like filling 0:18:03.960 --> 0:18:06.560 it with water and then freezing the water. Yeah, yeah, 0:18:06.880 --> 0:18:09.240 I maybe there's some science to that one too. I 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:10.840 didn't look too deep into that, but I wanted to 0:18:10.880 --> 0:18:13.840 mention that they at least tried. There's some stuff going 0:18:13.880 --> 0:18:18.440 on there. The superglue thing is uh slightly accurate. Um. 0:18:18.520 --> 0:18:21.640 But the reason for this is that they had uh 0:18:21.680 --> 0:18:24.440 an actual scientist on set who is sort of there, 0:18:25.080 --> 0:18:28.040 I guess, reference point and adviser. And his name is 0:18:28.160 --> 0:18:32.440 Dr Spiros Machalicus. Uh. He's from cal Tech, California, and 0:18:32.480 --> 0:18:35.800 he consulted mainly about quantum physics and the miniaturization stuff. 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:38.399 But you know, maybe he also was like, by the way, 0:18:38.560 --> 0:18:42.520 you can break into this lock with superglue. All right, 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:45.680 so we yeah, we're gonna touch on some of Macalicus's 0:18:45.880 --> 0:18:49.600 um thoughts and on the science of aunt Man. We're 0:18:49.600 --> 0:18:54.880 also going to reference the physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios. Yeah, 0:18:54.920 --> 0:18:57.960 a lot of Greek guys looking into the science of 0:18:57.960 --> 0:19:01.000 of superheroes here. Uh. I do want to add here 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:03.800 before we dive into this that so obviously it would 0:19:03.840 --> 0:19:05.480 have been ideal if we had done this right when 0:19:05.480 --> 0:19:08.800 the movie came out in theaters, but I actually like 0:19:08.920 --> 0:19:12.960 that we're not because so much was paid attention to 0:19:13.000 --> 0:19:17.280 the science in articles or an other kind of you know, 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:20.359 content that was created around the internet when that movie 0:19:20.400 --> 0:19:22.480 came out, that we're able to sort of gather it 0:19:22.520 --> 0:19:25.800 all together, compare notes, and do like the full shebang now, 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:30.120 where um, like wired had some pieces and nerdiced had 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:32.960 some pieces, but they didn't have like all of it together. 0:19:33.000 --> 0:19:34.840 And this I feel like we're able to bring it 0:19:34.880 --> 0:19:36.840 all together now a couple of months later. Yeah. And plus, 0:19:36.880 --> 0:19:38.199 if you're like me and you only get out to 0:19:38.240 --> 0:19:40.160 see a movie in the theater once or twice a year, 0:19:40.359 --> 0:19:41.919 then then you know this is this is maybe a 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:46.560 more ideal time. So let's start off by talking about miniaturization, 0:19:46.640 --> 0:19:49.480 which again we've seen in so many different science fiction 0:19:49.520 --> 0:19:54.080 films and TV shows and comics. But how would it 0:19:54.160 --> 0:19:57.679 possibly work? So here's the thing, just to get this 0:19:57.720 --> 0:20:03.359 out of the way. Miniaturization, as we comprehend it is 0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:07.080 physically impossible based on our understanding of physics. There's so 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:10.320 many reasons why it wouldn't work, not even just the miniaturization, 0:20:10.359 --> 0:20:12.199 but we'll talk later as well as like even if 0:20:12.240 --> 0:20:14.639 you could come up with some way to miniatureize a body, 0:20:14.920 --> 0:20:17.240 there's so many things that would go wrong with that body. 0:20:17.400 --> 0:20:20.240 Yeah it's miniaturized. Yeah, it's like going from you know, 0:20:20.320 --> 0:20:25.800 duplos to normal legos or vice versa. Yeah, So as 0:20:25.960 --> 0:20:31.120 Umkakalios points out in his book, at a very basic level, 0:20:31.280 --> 0:20:33.239 matters made out of atoms, and the size of an 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:36.240 atom is a fundamental length scale of nature, and it's 0:20:36.280 --> 0:20:40.800 not open to continue with adjustment. And furthermore, Isaac Asimov, 0:20:40.840 --> 0:20:43.120 who of course had to crunch the science way back 0:20:43.119 --> 0:20:46.119 when he did his novelization of Fantastic Voyage, which is 0:20:46.119 --> 0:20:50.720 interesting because, as I recall the story, there was they said, hey, hey, Isaac, 0:20:51.000 --> 0:20:53.840 we need should write a novelization of this hot new film, 0:20:54.040 --> 0:20:55.760 and He's like, how, I don't want to do it, 0:20:55.800 --> 0:20:58.119 and they finally agreed to let him to get him 0:20:58.160 --> 0:21:00.000 to do it, provided he got to tweet the science 0:21:00.040 --> 0:21:02.560 to try and make it work a little bit him. Yeah, 0:21:02.600 --> 0:21:04.560 So in his novelization he points out that to make 0:21:04.600 --> 0:21:08.880