Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey then, everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks at the future and says I
Speaker 1: got Kitty Pride and Nightcrawler to waiting there for me.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren, and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: today we're recording the second part of an episode that
Speaker 1: was a listener request from listener Derek VROs, who asked
Speaker 1: us to do a podcast about whether science and technology
Speaker 1: could make us into characters from the X Men. I
Speaker 1: mean through whatever means necessary. I guess, through genetic manipulation,
Speaker 1: through uh, cybernetics, through just plain old power suits and
Speaker 1: liquid nitrogen guns. How can we become Iceman, Magneto, Wolverine, Cyclops.
Speaker 1: Last time, we already did the original X Men team,
Speaker 1: And who did that include? It was Professor X, of course,
Speaker 1: the Professor X, Jean Gray, Scott summers At a Cyclops, Iceman,
Speaker 1: the Beast Angel, and that's it. Did I name all five?
Speaker 1: I think that's it? Plus it was six toe right
Speaker 1: because Professor X is one of them. Did you say
Speaker 1: Jean Gray? Did say Jean Gray? Then We're good. Oh
Speaker 1: the Beast? Did we name the Beast? What is wrong
Speaker 1: with your brain? I don't know. Well, we've already talked
Speaker 1: about the original team, but I had to admit last
Speaker 1: time that I am a what did you call me, Lauren,
Speaker 1: I'm a fake geek girl. I said that, You're not
Speaker 1: a fake geek girl. Okay, I'm not a fake geet girl,
Speaker 1: but I am what you might say as a casual
Speaker 1: X Men fan, which is which is fine. I was
Speaker 1: surprised to hear that the famous Wolverine is not, in
Speaker 1: fact one of the original X Men. Yeah, he's not.
Speaker 1: He's he's uh a hanger on the pretender. Um, he's
Speaker 1: a fake geek girl now as long as as well,
Speaker 1: so we have to talk about Wolverine. So I figured
Speaker 1: that justifies another podcast. Wolverine on his Own could be
Speaker 1: an entire podcast, especially when you take into account all
Speaker 1: the different iterations, because I like, by the time we're
Speaker 1: recording this podcast, which is in November two thousand fourteen,
Speaker 1: right now, as in the comic book world, Wolverine is dead.
Speaker 1: It happens to everyone. I mean, well, he's he's died
Speaker 1: before too, so I don't expect that to be permanent.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's going to last very long. Though.
Speaker 1: I read something online that I was thinking, surely this
Speaker 1: can't be true. They said that, uh, he at one
Speaker 1: point was brought back to life from a single drop
Speaker 1: of his blood. And yes, it's pretty much the case.
Speaker 1: That's how good is healing factor is? How would he
Speaker 1: still have his memories and everything? You know? Maybe he didn't.
Speaker 1: Every single cell in your body has your total in
Speaker 1: a and it clearly his memories were somehow wrapped up
Speaker 1: genetically and the rest of it. Uh, the guy's got
Speaker 1: an adamantium. The listeners can't hear it. Look, I can
Speaker 1: apologize for just about any sort of comic book crazy
Speaker 1: plot you want. I don't necessarily believe what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: but I can apologize for it. Okay, well, let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and dive right in and start with with the
Speaker 1: old wolverine himself. He's got what are his powers? He's
Speaker 1: got super healing. That's that's a big one. His healing
Speaker 1: factors was often In fact, super healing might might be
Speaker 1: an understatement. It's like hyper healing. Yeah, he essentially he
Speaker 1: can take damage that would kill any other creature ever,
Speaker 1: and recover from it. Okay, He's got adamantium claws that
Speaker 1: extend out of his knuckles. Technically, he has an entire
Speaker 1: adamantium skeleton, which is not a mutant power. It was
Speaker 1: added onto a skeleton. The fact that he had this
Speaker 1: mutant healing power allowed him to survive the process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so and so I think classically that's where that
Speaker 1: the claws come in. He has bone claws that adamantium
Speaker 1: has been bonded to. Okay, so the claws are part
Speaker 1: of his mutant power that was not surgically added to him.
Speaker 1: He has bone claws which when magnetos stripped away all
Speaker 1: the adamantium from wolverine skeletal system. Uh, he's still retained
Speaker 1: the clause, but now they were just Yeah. He also
Speaker 1: has adamantium chest hair, doesn't he Oh yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's like a brillo pad. Yeah, that's in fact where
Speaker 1: Billow came from. In fact, the harvested from him. And
Speaker 1: he goes into the factory once a week and they
Speaker 1: need to clean the school for gifted humans. They just
Speaker 1: put him face down on the floor, push him back
Speaker 1: and forth across the floor. He doesn't get his back.
Speaker 1: It's fine, he'll, he'll, he's um, he's he's lost a
Speaker 1: lot of dignity over the years. Okay, well, it seems
Speaker 1: like the sorry logan, I'm sorry fiction. The essential, the
Speaker 1: essential wolverine power I think we've got to start with
Speaker 1: is the healing. Sure. Is there a way that we
Speaker 1: know of to create hyper healing in humans? Well, not know,
Speaker 1: but I mean there's there's a lot of work going
Speaker 1: in obviously to try and find ways to help people
Speaker 1: heal from injury and illness more effectively. Right, And there
Speaker 1: are some interesting frontiers at sort of the edges of
Speaker 1: healing science about what we could do in the future.
Speaker 1: Because here's one example of the limitations of human healing.
Speaker 1: Humans cannot regrow lost limbs. Right, so you you get
Speaker 1: a little cut in your hand, Well, over time, hopefully
Speaker 1: that'll close up and and you'll get some scar tissue maybe,
Speaker 1: but it'll your skin will cover the wound. If you
Speaker 1: cut your hand off, you're not going to get another
Speaker 1: one back. It's gone. You might causeplay as as Captain
Speaker 1: Hook for the rest of your life, right, but that's
Speaker 1: what I would do, not am. Not all animals are
Speaker 1: like this, Like, for example, some salamanders, you know, can
Speaker 1: regrow lost limbs. You cut off a limb and it
Speaker 1: will completely reconstruct itself stars. Yeah, and the blueprints are there, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, so you have the coding information inside your
Speaker 1: body to make new copies of all the parts you have.
Speaker 1: You had to have that information because it was with
Speaker 1: you when you were in embryo, when you were making
Speaker 1: those parts to begin with. But we've got something that
Speaker 1: happens in our bodies that prevents us from regrowing lost
Speaker 1: limbs once we're an adult. Is there a way that
Speaker 1: we can access through medical science those pathways to re
Speaker 1: uh to to sort of give ourselves healing powers that
Speaker 1: aren't natural to humans as adults. Well, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of research going into that very thing. In
Speaker 1: fact um, there's there used to be a belief that
Speaker 1: once you've got to a certain level of complexity with
Speaker 1: a biological organism, that is what was the limiting factor,
Speaker 1: that somehow, if you've got complex enough, then you would
Speaker 1: no longer be able to regrow a lost limb. It's
Speaker 1: like system overload. There's too many things going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was the dominant thinking for a long time. It
Speaker 1: now seems like that is no longer the dominant thinking
Speaker 1: that there are. There's a kind of a sea change
Speaker 1: in that um and there's been a lot of interesting work, uh,
Speaker 1: interesting work that has dealt with some experiments that are
Speaker 1: fairly gruesome. I mean when you when you look at
Speaker 1: it from especially if you if you love animals like mice,
Speaker 1: this might be difficult to hear, but the Tough University
Speaker 1: Center for Regenerative Medicine and Developmental Biology is looking at
Speaker 1: ways to boost regenerative powers, mostly through the interaction of
Speaker 1: cells using electrical charge and how they commune kate in
Speaker 1: a way to try and stimulate growth um in a
Speaker 1: way that normally wouldn't happen in organisms like us. And
Speaker 1: the way they've tested it is largely by taking things
Speaker 1: like a mice and cutting toes off of them and
Speaker 1: then trying to stimulate that. They also looked at activating
Speaker 1: a gene called lynn A l i N two eight
Speaker 1: A to help regrow lost bits like toes, and they've
Speaker 1: actually been successful with that. They were looking at this
Speaker 1: only after they had already been exploring that particular gene
Speaker 1: through cancer research. It was one of those things where
Speaker 1: they discovered something and thought it was interesting, and now
Speaker 1: there might be a different application. Cool. So obviously we're
Speaker 1: not there yet for humans, but I think there is
Speaker 1: some reason to believe it's possible that in the future
Speaker 1: medical science could allow us to have regenerative powers that
Speaker 1: we don't have today. Yeah, I think in the foreseeable
Speaker 1: future it'll be very limited. It will be things injuries
Speaker 1: that are still not um incredibly severe. I imagine that
Speaker 1: the more severe the injury, the harder it will be
Speaker 1: to truly regenerate, uh in kind of tissue like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, but it's it's promising, and I hope that
Speaker 1: this research ends up finding its way into medical practices where,
Speaker 1: you know, in the future, maybe twenty years or so
Speaker 1: in the future, people who have suffered injuries can have
Speaker 1: a much better prognosis or even with the combination, I
Speaker 1: could see potentially the combination of something like a like
Speaker 1: a three D printed bone and and you know, various
Speaker 1: various other implants could could help you technologically bond better
Speaker 1: with a prosthesis. Yeah, clearly this would be something we'd
Speaker 1: want to be really careful about because anytime you're talking
Speaker 1: about stimulating cell growth, there are a lot of other
Speaker 1: questions that come up. That's like, how do you make
Speaker 1: sure that that's a controlled growth for example? Okay, so
Speaker 1: there's another thing I was hearing about in sort of
Speaker 1: the future of of healing technology, and it was a
Speaker 1: little electrical implant that DARPA was working on. Does that
Speaker 1: have any relevance to this UM? Not really, but it
Speaker 1: is really fascinating, and I guess Okay, let let me
Speaker 1: let me explain what this is. Okay. So you've got
Speaker 1: a lot of nerves throughout your body that are monitoring
Speaker 1: all of your systems and sending alerts back to your
Speaker 1: brain whenever there's something wrong, and and that alert might
Speaker 1: be sudden tissue damage, activate pain, and motor functions, which
Speaker 1: is how we can pull our hand back very quickly
Speaker 1: from a too hot surface. UM. And it's also how
Speaker 1: your body knows to send the resources to that hand
Speaker 1: to start healing over the burn. UM. It might also
Speaker 1: be something like foreign substance detected, Active and immune system UM,
Speaker 1: which is really rad in general. It lets it lets
Speaker 1: you uh fight off infections right. UM. However, if you've
Speaker 1: got an overactive nervous system or an over active immune response,
Speaker 1: that is not so rad. UM. That kind of thing
Speaker 1: can lead to your your body misdiagnosing a problem when
Speaker 1: there isn't one, which can cause all kinds of trouble,
Speaker 1: like like your immune system can start attacking healthy tissues
Speaker 1: in your joints, which is what goes on in arthritis.
Speaker 1: So darpest idea is to implant like nerve thread sized
Speaker 1: devices to attach to your nerves that will regulate your
Speaker 1: nerve impulses, thus helping your immune system be more accurate. Uh,
Speaker 1: the technology is not existent yet. This is all very
Speaker 1: much in the research phase. That the program is called
Speaker 1: Electrical Prescriptions or elect r X, which is which is
Speaker 1: very cute. Yeah. Um, partially because they're hoping to reduce
Speaker 1: our dependency on medications, which can have all of these
Speaker 1: unpredictable and unpleasant interactions with your other bodily systems. Plus,
Speaker 1: the more medications you have, the more likely you're gonna
Speaker 1: have complications. That sounds that could have be one of
Speaker 1: the It could be one of the less beloved X men,
Speaker 1: the one you write just specifically to kill that character,
Speaker 1: often fake moment of sincere grief among your characters because
Speaker 1: all the others are far too valuable merchandise wise for
Speaker 1: you to kill. Off, you died for our development. Okay,
Speaker 1: but so that sounds really interesting, But so it doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like a recipe for hyper healing. Yeah, it's more
Speaker 1: aimed towards restoring regular healing. I think the best you
Speaker 1: could possibly get out of this therapy is optimum healing
Speaker 1: given your body's current resources. Um though, I mean it
Speaker 1: certainly is interesting, like we've been saying, and the modulation
Speaker 1: of individual nerves is so potentially huge. I mean, imagine
Speaker 1: if we could control our body's stress responses, like the
Speaker 1: impact that that would have on mental health therapies. Sure,
Speaker 1: or I mean, if you can control the body's response
Speaker 1: to pain, that could be a big thing. Like pain
Speaker 1: is useful if you need you touch a hot stove,
Speaker 1: you know you need to. But we have more pain
Speaker 1: than we need is a species? Sure, you could have
Speaker 1: chronic pain as as a result of something that you
Speaker 1: have literally no control over. It's not doing you any
Speaker 1: good anymore. Yeah. Yeah, And there's a host of of
Speaker 1: related things to to stuff like arthritis, like uh, inflammatory
Speaker 1: bowel syndrome or fibromyalgia that could also have huge impact
Speaker 1: from this kind of research. Cool. Well, okay, so then
Speaker 1: are there any technological routes we actually know of right
Speaker 1: now that could accelerate human healing. Well, there's some that
Speaker 1: we're looking into that haven't necessarily panned out definitively. One
Speaker 1: of the big ones that I know of is using
Speaker 1: ultrasonic frequencies to help try and UH and facilitate bones
Speaker 1: knitting together after you've broken a bone. So you guys,
Speaker 1: remember we talked a little bit about a three D
Speaker 1: printed cast where it has that kind of look almost
Speaker 1: like a fish net kind of a pattern. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: reason for that fish net pattern, there are a few
Speaker 1: of them. One is to allow you to have a
Speaker 1: cast that's not all gammy and exactly that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But another was the idea of using it to give
Speaker 1: access to doctors to put UH transmitters, ultrasonic transmitters up
Speaker 1: against your skin so that you could have those ultrasonic
Speaker 1: frequencies stimulate your bones so they knit more quickly. It
Speaker 1: is supposed to facilitate that. However, that being said, there
Speaker 1: have been several studies with conflicting results about whether or
Speaker 1: not this actual process is helpful or if it's no
Speaker 1: different from healing without the use of ultrasonic frequencies. So
Speaker 1: it's still questionable as to whether or not this is
Speaker 1: really useful, and if it is useful, it might be negligible.
Speaker 1: In other words, it may be useful to the point
Speaker 1: where the cost of of getting the treatment is not
Speaker 1: really you know, and it's not justified, Like the speed
Speaker 1: of the healing isn't so great as to justify that
Speaker 1: kind of expense when you could be using that equipment
Speaker 1: for something else. So there's still some question about it.
Speaker 1: But that's an example of using technology to try and
Speaker 1: help people heal more rapidly than they otherwise would. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't look like we have anything on the table
Speaker 1: right now that's going to get us anywhere near. You know.
Speaker 1: Wolverine is kind of like, oh, I got shot thirty
Speaker 1: seconds ago, and now I'm okay, yeah the Hollywood, Uh
Speaker 1: I got shot, But I am still fully capable of
Speaker 1: carrying out my part in this plot until I am
Speaker 1: no longer relevant. That doesn't work so much. You know,
Speaker 1: probably never is when that will happen. I'm I'm guessing never.
Speaker 1: I try to maintain my relevance as much as possible
Speaker 1: just in case it ever does kick in, so that
Speaker 1: they don't get rid of me too quickly. I think
Speaker 1: shielding is going to be the more important tech technological
Speaker 1: system there, but that's probably a whole other episode. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the realistic future, sman, if we can believe that
Speaker 1: maybe they will get this regenerative power going, is that
Speaker 1: you have a superhero who can run into the enemy base,
Speaker 1: get her arm cut off in the midst of a fight,
Speaker 1: and then retreat and then grow a new arm in
Speaker 1: some months. Maybe maybe what we're thinking, I think I
Speaker 1: think that's kind of the hope, the ultimate hope is
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, no, and it sound it does
Speaker 1: sound incredibly silly, but but how how incredible would it
Speaker 1: be to to have victims of industrial accidents or car
Speaker 1: accidents or military accidents to be able to regain I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean it's hard for us, being h you know,
Speaker 1: more or less able bodied humans, to imagine how completely
Speaker 1: life destructive that would be. Yeah. Sure, I mean, if
Speaker 1: we're talking about it as real medical potential, that's totally
Speaker 1: different thing. But is it a superpower? Comparing comparing it
Speaker 1: to Wolverine's healing factor, it would be you know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like can I lift five hundred pounds? Well,
Speaker 1: not all at once, but if you give me enough time,
Speaker 1: I can lift the equivalent of five hundred pounds. That's
Speaker 1: not exactly a superpower. That's just a normal power. So
Speaker 1: the question is can we get this accelerated healing as
Speaker 1: a normal power. It's still not going to be the
Speaker 1: crazy thing we see with Wolverine where practically instantaneously he's
Speaker 1: able to heal, you know, at least superficial wounds. Are
Speaker 1: you trying to arm wrestle me, Jonathan, No, I would
Speaker 1: never try to arm wrestle you. Okay, okay, let's move
Speaker 1: on to the next thing. Adamantium skeleton. Well, obviously this
Speaker 1: is a no go because if if you can't have
Speaker 1: wolverine healing, you can't have an adamantium skeleton skeleton. Also,
Speaker 1: I don't think adamantium exists. I was about to say,
Speaker 1: you would have to invent adamantium first. I would want
Speaker 1: vibranium anyway. Well, but is there anything like this? Can
Speaker 1: we reinforce the human skeleton? Well, we actually have some
Speaker 1: examples of grafting other materials onto bone structure. UM. With
Speaker 1: some bone fracture, surgeons can choose is to perform a
Speaker 1: bone graft, uh, which would mean taking bone from you
Speaker 1: and replacing another part of your bone structure. But they
Speaker 1: could also do something that's called a zeno graft, which
Speaker 1: means they would actually take material from a totally different species,
Speaker 1: like coral. Now, coral is biocompatible with human tissue. However,
Speaker 1: coral normally would not be strong enough support human weight
Speaker 1: or human stresses. So you couldn't just replace a bone
Speaker 1: with coral and expected to be work, you know, to
Speaker 1: work the way your bone used to work. But you
Speaker 1: can process that coral so that's strong enough to withstand
Speaker 1: the same stress as that a typical human bone would.
Speaker 1: And uh, and so we there's actually, in fact, my
Speaker 1: wife knew a teacher who had this done with an eye. Uh,
Speaker 1: in fact, had an eye surgically implanted. That was a
Speaker 1: coral I. So it was it was permanently fixed into
Speaker 1: his orbital bone. Yeah, she's got some great stories about
Speaker 1: this guy, like the time his his glass eye before
Speaker 1: he got the coral implant popped out of a basketball
Speaker 1: game and caused hilarity to ensue. She's got some great
Speaker 1: stories about uh and any rate. Uh. We also have
Speaker 1: plenty of examples of surgeons using metal plates and screws
Speaker 1: and bolts and things in order to help n help
Speaker 1: hold bones together, probably so they knit together. But again,
Speaker 1: this is a case of helping bones heal. It's not
Speaker 1: a case of reinforcing the bones or replacing them. And
Speaker 1: and no, ideally you remove those pieces as soon as
Speaker 1: the bones are healthy. Right well, And I want to
Speaker 1: bring up another concern, which is that the bones in
Speaker 1: your body are not just like rocks in there. They're
Speaker 1: they're dynamic, living tissues that do things within your body.
Speaker 1: You know, your bones have marrow in them that I
Speaker 1: believe they manufacture red blood cells right, and bones cells
Speaker 1: themselves are created and destroyed in a natural process throughout
Speaker 1: the body. There that you know, the bone creation cells
Speaker 1: and the bone destruction cells, the osteoblasts and the osteoclast.
Speaker 1: It's not just like you could stick any hard substance
Speaker 1: in your body where the bone should be and you'll
Speaker 1: be good to go. Yeah, right right, And you wouldn't
Speaker 1: really want to entirely coat your bone and anything, even
Speaker 1: if that were possible from a from a physiological standpoint,
Speaker 1: because again, your your bones are doing stuff. Um, they're
Speaker 1: interacting with other cells in your body and other substances
Speaker 1: and so if if you coated them, it would be
Speaker 1: like wrapping plastic wrap around your hand permanently um, which
Speaker 1: wouldn't really be too much fun. Not to mention the
Speaker 1: fact that if you were truly coding every every surface
Speaker 1: of your bones with something else, you would have to
Speaker 1: at some point remove tendons from the bones, like you
Speaker 1: would have to essentially detach all the muscles then reattach
Speaker 1: all the muscles to get every surface of the bone
Speaker 1: coated with this stuff. So it's it's it's problematic. It's
Speaker 1: not a good plan. I think I think that this one.
Speaker 1: I I do think that it's potentially possible. Again, you
Speaker 1: can see in some of the prosthetic research that's being done,
Speaker 1: and and even in some of the three D printing
Speaker 1: bone kind of research that's being done. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's possible to maybe enforce our bones with stronger stuff. Maybe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this this one is at least for if we're
Speaker 1: talking about superpowers. I don't think anyone's going to get
Speaker 1: a full skeleton upgrade anytime soon. I hope not, especially
Speaker 1: without factor. Okay, well, what about the marquee event the clause?
Speaker 1: Oh well, first of all, it's totally possible, but it
Speaker 1: won't make this nick sound. That's the problem is that
Speaker 1: it's well, then what's the point while that's at the
Speaker 1: end of the claw? Okay, no, all right, when you
Speaker 1: when we're being serious here about installing clause clearly anything
Speaker 1: that would allow us to be able to extend and
Speaker 1: retract them. You guys are sorry. Just an image of
Speaker 1: I'm sure this has been done before, this joke has
Speaker 1: happened somewhere in the comics, but of of Wolverine working
Speaker 1: in a kitchen somewhere, like being the line cook, chopping
Speaker 1: all the vegetables, and it's just basically ramming his knuckles
Speaker 1: up and down on the table. You know, for a Canadian,
Speaker 1: he's really not that polite at any rate. So, uh,
Speaker 1: the clause being able to have claws installed in your
Speaker 1: arms somewhat tricky, I would imagine, you know, well, anytime
Speaker 1: that you're changing your muscular skeletal system. Yeah, well, okay,
Speaker 1: what about just some attachable clause. Yeah, that that's actually
Speaker 1: been done. There's a guy named Colin Furs or Furs,
Speaker 1: who is a YouTube personality, and he builds crazy stuff,
Speaker 1: like not just stuff that relates back to superheroes, but
Speaker 1: all sorts of bonkers stuff, and he created retractable wolverine
Speaker 1: claws that are powered by an air compressor. So he
Speaker 1: actually has to wear a big backpack in order to
Speaker 1: have these work. And then he has tubes that go
Speaker 1: from the backpack to the um to the two clause
Speaker 1: systems that are worn on the backs of his forearms. Right,
Speaker 1: so he straps these things onto the backs of his arms.
Speaker 1: He has a trigger. Pushing the trigger releases the air
Speaker 1: pressure that allows the clause to extend. He has a
Speaker 1: second trigger or release or whatever where it cuts off
Speaker 1: that supply of the clause retract So I guess they're
Speaker 1: on a spring system. He doesn't actually show how he
Speaker 1: built it. He just demonstrates them working, and he cackles
Speaker 1: a lot, as he should. If I had working retractable
Speaker 1: wolverine claws trapped to my arms, I would not stop
Speaker 1: cackling for days. You already cackle a decent amat and
Speaker 1: I don't even have grads. This is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: There'd be at least a two increase in cackling on
Speaker 1: my part. So anyway, Science his his YouTube videos are amazing,
Speaker 1: So this one in particular, he shows off how he's
Speaker 1: able to extend them and retract them. H And he's
Speaker 1: able to do that repeatedly until he's run out of
Speaker 1: compressed air, in which case he has to essentially refill
Speaker 1: the tank in his backpack. So it's not a lightweight solution.
Speaker 1: It's not something that you would wear all over the place.
Speaker 1: It I'm sure it's it's rather heavy, but it was
Speaker 1: an effective demonstration of a technological approach to the same
Speaker 1: sort of thing that Wolverine can quote unquote do naturally
Speaker 1: in the comics. Can he like cut a humby in
Speaker 1: half with him and stuff? He did not do it
Speaker 1: in the video. I am going to guess that he
Speaker 1: does not have the arms strength for that, even if
Speaker 1: the claws themselves were somehow sharp enough and could remain
Speaker 1: sharp enough to do that. Uh he also, you know,
Speaker 1: you gotta keep in mind this is also very different
Speaker 1: from having claws embedded in the arm that can extend
Speaker 1: out from the skin the way it's depicted, at least
Speaker 1: in the film versions. The claws break the skin every
Speaker 1: time he extends them. Oh yeah, well, this is where
Speaker 1: his super healing capacity also comes in, because it breaks
Speaker 1: and heals up every time he does it. It's pretty painful,
Speaker 1: but he says it hurts every time. That's one of
Speaker 1: the does it does that hurt every time almost every time,
Speaker 1: And then the times it feels pretty good and they
Speaker 1: start they start singing from lame is. That's a weird
Speaker 1: guy anyway. But that I don't know why that would
Speaker 1: necessarily be because I don't think this supplies to wolverines.
Speaker 1: But some animals have claws that are retractable. Not retractable
Speaker 1: pro tract dial is the word for for that biological mechanism.
Speaker 1: You've probably seen it in cats. There's a couple of
Speaker 1: families of mammals that have them. Um, there's a muscle
Speaker 1: group that allows these these types of critters to to
Speaker 1: push out their fancy pokey toenails just when they want
Speaker 1: to use them, which also lets them keep them hidden
Speaker 1: in a fold of skin the rest of the time,
Speaker 1: which reduces wear and tear to the claw and also
Speaker 1: lets them move more quickly and quietly in certain situations. Right,
Speaker 1: So these are not retracting fully within the biological system.
Speaker 1: It's not like they're they're not breaking the skin every time, right,
Speaker 1: They're just hidden by a fold of skin and then
Speaker 1: can protract out from that fold, right, But like dogs
Speaker 1: can't do this. I mean, if your dog hasn't trimmed
Speaker 1: the toe nails in a while, he's doing a little
Speaker 1: tap dance on the kitchen floor. Yes, yeah, that that's
Speaker 1: why cats generally don't tap dance a lot of many
Speaker 1: other reasons. But they do amazing choreography they do. It's
Speaker 1: all very new vau though. Um rum tum tugger is amazing.
Speaker 1: That's all I'm gonna say. All musical references in this
Speaker 1: episode and installing this in humans though as we've we've
Speaker 1: kind of danced around before, no pun intended. Um would
Speaker 1: be would be real messy. Um, we have to have
Speaker 1: like first of all, if you're going with a protractile method,
Speaker 1: even then you have to change our physiology. You have
Speaker 1: to create those folds of skin that things could exist within.
Speaker 1: They would not nearly be the length of wolverine's claws. No, no,
Speaker 1: And you need to change the bone structure and them
Speaker 1: and the muscle structure around it. It would that would
Speaker 1: I don't think I want to even I'm getting real
Speaker 1: grossed out just thinking about it. Right. Plus, I mean,
Speaker 1: as we sort of alluded to earlier, without the magic metal,
Speaker 1: without the magic healing, this system doesn't even really sound
Speaker 1: like something you'd want. It sort of only makes sense
Speaker 1: if you already start with the other magic assumptions exactly.
Speaker 1: The one thing, if you're talking about breaking the skin
Speaker 1: every time, you're talking about also inviting infection constantly, right
Speaker 1: like you're you're talking about opening a wound every time
Speaker 1: you want to extend these claws. I also don't really understand,
Speaker 1: like I've never seen any artists illustration of how the
Speaker 1: inside of Logan's arm is supposed to look, because you
Speaker 1: imagine that the clause in order for them to extend
Speaker 1: out from the forearm through the between the knuckles, essentially
Speaker 1: it's depicted or just above the knuckles nanobots. Yeah, you wonder,
Speaker 1: because they would have to retract far enough for him
Speaker 1: to still be able to bend his wrists, right, So
Speaker 1: they couldn't. They couldn't point, They couldn't just be in
Speaker 1: his hand, the points in his hand, because then he
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to flex his wrists at all. He's
Speaker 1: got pretty beefy arms, though, I think that there's clearly
Speaker 1: some kind of pockets. He can't bend his wrists anyway inside. Yeah,
Speaker 1: have you ever seen him bend his wrists? There's so
Speaker 1: many jokes, but nobody I think. I think we need
Speaker 1: to move on from Wolverine real quick. Before we do,
Speaker 1: I did want to mention that that the two groups
Speaker 1: of mammals that have these these pro tractile claws are
Speaker 1: our cats, but both house cats and large cats and
Speaker 1: also civets. Wolverines definitely don't have this thing. So I
Speaker 1: think that we should lobby for a name change. He
Speaker 1: should be the civet. He could also make amazing coffee.
Speaker 1: But I'm not going to tell you how. Let's move on, Yes,
Speaker 1: let us move on on that note. Next one Night
Speaker 1: Crawler Kurt Kurt Wagner. He's uh what a character man.
Speaker 1: He's sweet right, Yeah, he was a former Roman Catholic
Speaker 1: priest in the comics as well, and um a, his
Speaker 1: his abilities are pretty He's one of those extra bunch.
Speaker 1: He's one of those ex men that has a bunch
Speaker 1: of different abilities. Of course, he's the one if you've
Speaker 1: seen the movies. In the second film he appears, he's
Speaker 1: the blue one with the tail played by Alan Cumming.
Speaker 1: Boy more musical references. I can make more of them now. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of upset that they didn't just do a
Speaker 1: few musical bits on set of at least they haven't
Speaker 1: released footage of it. Right where Wolverine and Nightcrawlers start
Speaker 1: singing duets, It would be phenomenal. Yeah, but you're you're
Speaker 1: the wrong era of musicals there. You have to get
Speaker 1: much more melodramatic and sad. But uh, yeah. So some
Speaker 1: of Nightcrawlers abilities are ones that we've already talked about
Speaker 1: on this show. Well, one of the main ones obviously
Speaker 1: is teleportation. Yeah, okay, now that one. Let's save that
Speaker 1: one for last though. Okay, okay, let's say that one
Speaker 1: for last. Let's talk about First of all, he's got
Speaker 1: the ability to kind of be sort of invisible. If
Speaker 1: he's in the shadows, he can kind of fade in
Speaker 1: with them. He can't do it in broad daylight, but
Speaker 1: in the shadows he can fade back enough for him
Speaker 1: to be effectively invisible. And we've talked about invisibility several
Speaker 1: times on Forward Thinking. Yeah, we did a podcast where
Speaker 1: we talked about, in fact, a bunch of different ways
Speaker 1: of becoming invisible through technology. There, of course, the meta
Speaker 1: material methods we've talked about, though those we don't know
Speaker 1: if that will ever be applicable on the visual spectrum
Speaker 1: or covering enough of the visual spectrum to really make
Speaker 1: something truly invisible, but they are already showing promise on
Speaker 1: the microwave spectrum for sort of narrow bands of frequencies.
Speaker 1: So of course, meta materials are these sort of tiny
Speaker 1: structures that are synthetic, They don't exist in nature, and
Speaker 1: they can manipulate the way electromagnet the fields bend around them. Right, right,
Speaker 1: So even if we were to develop a really awesome
Speaker 1: meta material type that could cover the whole visible spectrum,
Speaker 1: there's no guarantee that we would be able to make
Speaker 1: it movable, right, It may end up being something that. Sure,
Speaker 1: it's effective if you want to, i don't know, hide
Speaker 1: the existence of a building away from the the world,
Speaker 1: but it may not work for something that's going to
Speaker 1: be jumping around all over the place. Sure, But we
Speaker 1: also talked about active camouflage. That kind of seems more
Speaker 1: reasonable to me for how a creature might not become
Speaker 1: completely invisible but could pretty well hide, especially in dark conditions,
Speaker 1: And lots of animals already have this power, So like
Speaker 1: an octopus can easily blend in with with its surroundings
Speaker 1: by projecting different colors on its skin to match the
Speaker 1: patterns of the surface where it's hiding. Yeah, it would
Speaker 1: need to have Again, you would have to have a
Speaker 1: suit that could completely cover you so that you're you're
Speaker 1: not you know, if your hands in head and are revealed,
Speaker 1: then it might say like, that's weird that there's a
Speaker 1: disembodied pair of hands and a head moving around and
Speaker 1: I can't see anything else attached to it. So that
Speaker 1: would also be maybe possible in the future with the
Speaker 1: right technology. Again, you'd have to be totally covered. One
Speaker 1: of the active camouflage methods we mentioned in our episode
Speaker 1: on invisibility tech was the flexible optoelectric camouflage skin and
Speaker 1: this was done by uh there was a paper on
Speaker 1: it earlier this year. I think it was August by
Speaker 1: researchers at the University of Houston and the University of Illinois,
Speaker 1: and they published paper called Adaptive Optoelectric Camouflage Systems with
Speaker 1: designs inspired by cephalopod skins. So this was creating multi
Speaker 1: layered flat surfaces that could mimic the patterns underneath them
Speaker 1: to the viewers above sort of like a cephalopod skin
Speaker 1: would and if you can imagine creating sort of a
Speaker 1: suit out of the skin, probably make you flawlessly invisible,
Speaker 1: but could be pretty useful active camouflage for whatever kind
Speaker 1: of surroundings you found yourself in. Now, as our call
Speaker 1: that particular one, I think only worked in various shades
Speaker 1: of gray for that for that approach, The one they've
Speaker 1: created so far as only black and white. But they
Speaker 1: think that they can scale it up and expand its
Speaker 1: frequency diversity, and so that that's a that's a solid maybe.
Speaker 1: Uh here's one of the yes column, because we haven't
Speaker 1: really talked about like a solid hit of a superpower.
Speaker 1: We can replicate today night vision. We can totally replicate
Speaker 1: night vision today using things like night vision goggles. Now
Speaker 1: that's that's obviously you know, technology on top of you. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: there are no implants for that yet. But yeah, that
Speaker 1: that one's been kicking around since World War Two. So
Speaker 1: we've got that one covered. Converting infrared light into visible light.
Speaker 1: Now we do convert that. Whether or not we could
Speaker 1: ever biologically uh engineers somebody so that they can perceive infrared,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting question. Because it would not only require
Speaker 1: us to be able to pick up infrared signals, but
Speaker 1: to process them. Uh, it's certainly not biologically impossible. There
Speaker 1: are animals that exist today, you see, and it's some
Speaker 1: snakes consense infra red. It's just the question. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's a seeing infrared as much as uh, tasting
Speaker 1: it isn't it? Am I incorrect? I don't know? But
Speaker 1: that sounds cool. It's it is, certainly it's it's like
Speaker 1: a taste smell combo really, but it's it's one of
Speaker 1: those things that while we can see examples of creatures
Speaker 1: being able to see into spectrums that were not whether
Speaker 1: that's infrared or ultra violet, the question remains whether or
Speaker 1: not we can engineer people to do that. That maybe
Speaker 1: possible in the future. I mean that's one of the
Speaker 1: sort of the issue with all of these Can we
Speaker 1: give a human some kind of animal power? There's always
Speaker 1: a big kind of question mark, Well, if we can,
Speaker 1: it's a lot easier to say no, that's definitely not
Speaker 1: going to happen for some of the crazier powers. Some
Speaker 1: of these other ones are a little more borderline. Yeah.
Speaker 1: For For the record, according to a very brief Google search.
Speaker 1: There there are these little kind of pits on snake
Speaker 1: faces that control the infrared sensing. Gotcha. Uh, then we've
Speaker 1: got wall crawling. That crawler can also crawl on walls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've done whole episodes about that too. About some of
Speaker 1: the materials that people are using, to the biommicry that
Speaker 1: people are using to reproduce sticky. Yeah, yeah, sticky often
Speaker 1: comes down to chemical, but there's also physical. So Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a researchers that m I T created a carbon
Speaker 1: nanotube based tape that could, in theory, line the gloves
Speaker 1: and shoes of a suit, so like a Spider Man's
Speaker 1: suit if you want to go with a different superhero. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it clings like glue but can be reused indefinitely.
Speaker 1: It doesn't lose its stickiness. It relies on the Vanderwall's
Speaker 1: force to hold two surfaces together, right, and that's just
Speaker 1: sort of this tiny molecular level force. It's active a
Speaker 1: very small scales. Yes, So making sure that you can
Speaker 1: have something that can support the weight of say your
Speaker 1: average mutant obviously has its challenges, but it's there's nothing
Speaker 1: specifically that we know of that would uh prevent us
Speaker 1: from being able to do that in the future. Now,
Speaker 1: we're still ages away from being able to produce anything
Speaker 1: like that on a large scale, but it's it's theoretically
Speaker 1: at least possible. So uh, not not a biological approach.
Speaker 1: We're not biologically changing people to be able to wall crawl.
Speaker 1: But again, using technology in this case, a a you know,
Speaker 1: a textile based technology could make it possible. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: time to get to the easy one, the teleprotation one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally doable via genetic engineering. Right if you if you
Speaker 1: happen to be a quantum particle, then maybe people that
Speaker 1: you could be it that you're ut Yeah, well jerks, Yeah, Lauren,
Speaker 1: inhabits all states of being simultaneously. It's we just all
Speaker 1: we've come to accept it, really, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you've come to accept it. I'm still struggling with it.
Speaker 1: Well only one part are many other parts of you
Speaker 1: have totally accepted it. Uh So Yeah, it's this is
Speaker 1: one that's not going to be possible most likely. Uh,
Speaker 1: I can't see it. We have talked about telebrotation before,
Speaker 1: and in fact scientists have looked into teleprotation, but it
Speaker 1: has been on quantum particles, things like photons or a
Speaker 1: feature of a quantum particle like it's spin. Uh, and
Speaker 1: they've been able to teleport things like that. However, that
Speaker 1: doesn't scale up. It's not something like you could. You
Speaker 1: can't say, oh, now that we know how to uh
Speaker 1: teleport this one, you know, disassemble this one particle and
Speaker 1: reassemble it elsewhere without actually transporting it across the space
Speaker 1: where that happened. We can never scale that up to
Speaker 1: macro size. Yeah. If you want to read a really
Speaker 1: interesting and clear to to the lay person breakdown of
Speaker 1: the problems with teleportation, I recommend checking out Lawrence Krauss
Speaker 1: is the science of Star Trek. He has a wonderful
Speaker 1: explanation of everything that's wrong with teleportation and like why
Speaker 1: it would just be impossible to do this? Yeah, Now
Speaker 1: we should say that there's nothing that we know of
Speaker 1: in physics that says it is absolutely impossible for a
Speaker 1: macro sized object to ever teleport. We just are light
Speaker 1: years away from ever discovering if that in fact is
Speaker 1: possible or impossible. Um, it's it's impossible effectively to us
Speaker 1: today and likely will be for the foreseeable future. If
Speaker 1: maybe you know, a thousand years from now we've developed
Speaker 1: a point where we could do it. Maybe then maybe
Speaker 1: it turns out that there is a way to do
Speaker 1: it for a macro sized object. However, based upon our
Speaker 1: understanding right now, if we were to do the same
Speaker 1: sort of approach that we do on the quantum scale,
Speaker 1: it would mean that you die when you teleport the
Speaker 1: the you that is you when you hit the button,
Speaker 1: it ceases to be Yeah, and then a copy of
Speaker 1: you when you press the button is constructed wherever it
Speaker 1: was that you were supposed to go with your full memories. Apparently, magically,
Speaker 1: that's that's in science fiction. Certainly, I don't know that
Speaker 1: in reality that would actually happen. It was certainly when
Speaker 1: your experience as an entity would cease to be. So
Speaker 1: think of it like if you were to suddenly make
Speaker 1: a clone of yourself and then someone shot you and
Speaker 1: you died. You would be gone. Your clone would continue
Speaker 1: to live, but you your experience would in the same
Speaker 1: sort of thing essentially, except instead of making a clone
Speaker 1: of you that exists at the same time you're making
Speaker 1: a you're you're stopping your existence and starting a clones
Speaker 1: existence practically simultaneously. Yeah, but then again, how do you
Speaker 1: know that that you didn't die one second before every
Speaker 1: single second of your life, and you're just under the
Speaker 1: illusion that your experience of consciousness is continuous. Well, Joe,
Speaker 1: how do you not How do you know for a
Speaker 1: fact that that clone of you isn't a better person
Speaker 1: than you are and therefore it's a better How do
Speaker 1: you know that you're alive at all? Okay, philosophically thinking,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go with telebrotation being bad because I want
Speaker 1: to continue my existence as long as I possibly. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: what about his tail? Prehensile tail? Pretty cool? Right? Monkeys
Speaker 1: have them? Yeah, whole whole bunches of mammals have them,
Speaker 1: Various monkeys and eaters, porcupines, mice, possums, and etcetera. Um,
Speaker 1: I see zero reasons why we couldn't design robotic prosthetic
Speaker 1: tales that had function pretty well. Oh, I would be
Speaker 1: surprised if that wasn't one of the easier things to
Speaker 1: genetically engineer and humans, especially because sometimes atavistic tales appear
Speaker 1: in human babies without technological asia. Sure, I don't believe
Speaker 1: that I've never read an account of anyone even being
Speaker 1: able to to consciously control one. But if you're talking
Speaker 1: about prehensile, then that does suppose that you would have
Speaker 1: some some measure of control. Yeah, yeah, a pretty a
Speaker 1: pretty large measure of control, a very advanced nervous and
Speaker 1: and muscle system going on. It would definitely require some
Speaker 1: massive changes in the fashion industry. Well, I mean, there
Speaker 1: there is some reasonable care technology. I believe I've heard
Speaker 1: before that the tales these aren't genes we lost. We
Speaker 1: still have the genes to make a tail. We just
Speaker 1: basically have another gene that says don't well, and and
Speaker 1: again in order to have a prehensile one. I think
Speaker 1: the technology approached, like the actual robotic tail that that
Speaker 1: ties into our system some other way, is the more
Speaker 1: likely early version of being able to have a tail.
Speaker 1: If you want to, I could also imagine a science
Speaker 1: fiction future where people get you know, they get the tail.
Speaker 1: Either they design like a flesh press that yeah tail,
Speaker 1: something like that. Either that or or people have chosen
Speaker 1: to genetically alter the next generation to have tales, because
Speaker 1: that is now so only the thing that people think
Speaker 1: is awesome. Like, I gotta imagine at least a science
Speaker 1: fiction story that follows that kind of thing. Whether or
Speaker 1: not it ever becomes true, I don't know. I will
Speaker 1: tell you that there are robotic tales you can buy
Speaker 1: right now. You guys are familiar with them, that there
Speaker 1: are super creepy conventions for this. Let's not judge Joe,
Speaker 1: come on, sorry, but but you know the the you've
Speaker 1: heard about the ears right that that respond to brain waves.
Speaker 1: They're supposed to indicate what your mood is. You know,
Speaker 1: they perk up or they they fold down. That kind
Speaker 1: of thing, very popular. They came out in Japan. Uh
Speaker 1: so did the tails. So the tails are essentially the
Speaker 1: same sort of thing. It's supposed to read your emotional
Speaker 1: state and then translate that into the various poses that
Speaker 1: the tail can take, including things like wagging um. And
Speaker 1: I included a picture in our notes just so people
Speaker 1: can see it. But just so people can see it,
Speaker 1: the people be Joe and Lauren. Uh I knew about these.
Speaker 1: I've known about him for a while because come on,
Speaker 1: I covered technology and so eventually I'm going to find
Speaker 1: out about it. Yeah, you might have seen these because
Speaker 1: they were on the internet. So I actually was following
Speaker 1: this before it became a full product, when it was
Speaker 1: still in development and Uh. I remember I interviewed a
Speaker 1: person named Shannon Morse for tech stuff who's a friend
Speaker 1: of mine, and she has a pair of the ears,
Speaker 1: and I asked her about the tale and she was
Speaker 1: fully on board. So there's a market for it. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about a different X Men, X Man X person.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about it. If person sounds like they died,
Speaker 1: we talked about this in the last episode. Okay, how
Speaker 1: about Storm? What about Storm? I want to talk about
Speaker 1: her in her abilities. Yes, I also thought she was
Speaker 1: one of the original X Men. Mostly you can't have
Speaker 1: more than one girl, and in an original Most of
Speaker 1: the most of the depictions of the X Men rely
Speaker 1: on the the lineup that came after the original group,
Speaker 1: especially since a lot of the ones like uh like Beasts,
Speaker 1: transformed further into in the later versions of the X Men. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: Storms powers pretty obviously are controlling the weather. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know how mutant powers give you like, I
Speaker 1: don't know what the biological it explained at all. But
Speaker 1: But also, Aurora is a very um Aurora. Sorry I
Speaker 1: think I said Aurora. There is a very kind of
Speaker 1: mystical X Men. She she's portrayed almost as as a
Speaker 1: goddess in in a lot of mythologies. She's like more
Speaker 1: like Thor than like Wolverine. Not not quite, not quite
Speaker 1: to that level. But yeah, but they never really bother
Speaker 1: explaining her. She's just kind of like, well, to be fair,
Speaker 1: they don't bother to explain most of them. It's just
Speaker 1: when you come down. It's not that I've read. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you know. Please please write in if I'm completely incorrect. Well,
Speaker 1: to be fair, there been mountains of materials written about
Speaker 1: these characters, and we there's no way we could have
Speaker 1: read all of it. But at any rate, Storm's ability
Speaker 1: is to influence the weather to the point where she
Speaker 1: can make storms appear out of nowhere. She can ice
Speaker 1: and driving, she can even fly. She can manipulate the
Speaker 1: air enough so that she's able to support herself and
Speaker 1: fly around that way. Yeah, so I think the first
Speaker 1: thing to note would be that this is pretty obviously
Speaker 1: not something that a person can do with their body, right,
Speaker 1: But yeah, the more abstracted version is, well, can you
Speaker 1: at least build a machine that would do some of
Speaker 1: this stuff and you could wheel it around with you?
Speaker 1: So essentially the Cobra commander weather controlled of us. We
Speaker 1: we've actually talked a little bit, well not about the
Speaker 1: Cobra Commander one, maybe maybe about that one too, but
Speaker 1: we've talked about controlling the weather in a couple other episodes,
Speaker 1: and how essentially impossible it really is, especially given the
Speaker 1: fact that we don't know what the weather is doing
Speaker 1: right now. I I mean, like, like we don't understand
Speaker 1: the systems enough to really be able to control them.
Speaker 1: There's so many factors that go into weather systems and
Speaker 1: so many variables that can change, like we don't know.
Speaker 1: We don't know which variables are necessarily the most important.
Speaker 1: We know that there are big ones like temperature, pressure
Speaker 1: of that kind of stuff, but we don't necessarily know
Speaker 1: which ones are the ones that are going to make
Speaker 1: a system produce let's say, six inches of rain versus
Speaker 1: a system that doesn't end up raining at all, And
Speaker 1: from our measurements, it looks like both were more or
Speaker 1: less identical up to a point. And so it's very
Speaker 1: tricky to even know what weather is going to be
Speaker 1: like in uh within a span of a day, much
Speaker 1: less be able to manipulate it so that we can
Speaker 1: make it do what we wanted to do. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: weather systems like big storm systems have tons of energy,
Speaker 1: I mean a massive amount of energy going into it.
Speaker 1: We talked about how if you want to to equate
Speaker 1: that to uh energy that we would produce, You're talking
Speaker 1: about nuclear bomb levels of energy. And so it's just
Speaker 1: not something that you can practically do. And you know,
Speaker 1: we've seen some weather um some weather manipulation techniques like
Speaker 1: cloud seating, but we don't even really know how effective
Speaker 1: that is or if it's effective at all. Again, unless
Speaker 1: you are able to somehow magically do the same experiment twice,
Speaker 1: once where under exact conditions you are able to seed
Speaker 1: the clouds and see if it makes rain, and once
Speaker 1: when you don't seed the cloud and see if those
Speaker 1: same conditions would produce rain. You can't really be certain.
Speaker 1: Uh Now, whether or not cloud seating works is not
Speaker 1: the topic of this episode. We could we could go
Speaker 1: into tons of papers that have been written that either
Speaker 1: support it or contested Chu. I think that they've done
Speaker 1: some some good research on that over on stuff they
Speaker 1: don't want you to know. Yeah, the point that we're
Speaker 1: just going to pass the buck over to them, but sorry,
Speaker 1: they love to be asked that question. Um, but no, seriously,
Speaker 1: like like we were, it's really just driving home the
Speaker 1: point that this is really complex. These are high energy
Speaker 1: systems and we just don't have the knowledge, let alone
Speaker 1: the technology to to change it. Oh sure, sure, but
Speaker 1: you know, caveat if you're talking about causing environmental changes
Speaker 1: in an immediate controlled area. You know, air pressure, heat
Speaker 1: and cold, moisture, electrostatic discharges, directed gusts of air were
Speaker 1: totally aces at those things. We have fans, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and not of the show. We have been pushing air
Speaker 1: devices fans, oscillating devices that create airflow. You could simulate
Speaker 1: lightning with, you know, some kind of Tesla coil like device.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, sure, you know, for some of these things
Speaker 1: you really need to be in a sea old or
Speaker 1: sealable room. Um. For For others we could design relatively
Speaker 1: on the go devices. But again, the real problem here
Speaker 1: is the is the energy requirements, Like like you were
Speaker 1: saying a moment ago um. And also any handheld versions
Speaker 1: of a lot of these things would be super dangerous.
Speaker 1: I would not personally want to be carrying around a
Speaker 1: Tesla coil. That sounds enormously bad. Yeah, there's not enough
Speaker 1: Faraday cage in the world to make me do that,
Speaker 1: part of you would still be holding the device. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I've seen Faraday like suits where people got
Speaker 1: zapped by Tesla coils, which looks really awesome. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: don't know that I want to wear one anytime soon,
Speaker 1: but if you have one, let me know, because I
Speaker 1: can change my mind under the right circumstances. You'll either
Speaker 1: send us a video or or let us know if
Speaker 1: we can come try it on. This is where we
Speaker 1: try and find out if architect listens to our show. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: now I've got one that's pretty easy, but also in
Speaker 1: a kind of disappointing way. Okay, Pyro, I mean, well, heck,
Speaker 1: this one's pretty solid. I mean, basically all you need
Speaker 1: is a flamethrower. I mean, is kind of dumb. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean when you when you think of it this way, like,
Speaker 1: the ability to shoot flames from your body and not
Speaker 1: be harmed by that fire would be pretty handy, you know,
Speaker 1: But that's also the aspect of his power that is
Speaker 1: really not doable. I mean, I can't see that there
Speaker 1: no matter what kind of genetic tampering you do, I
Speaker 1: don't think there's any way you can shoot fire out
Speaker 1: of your body and not be harmed, but you'd still
Speaker 1: need a fuel source, is the thing. Even if you
Speaker 1: could somehow control your immediate body temperature to rise to
Speaker 1: to but the ignition point of whatever material, you would
Speaker 1: still need the material. You've got to have the three
Speaker 1: things right. You need heat, oxygen, and fuel. So you'd
Speaker 1: have to be supplying some sort of fuel, maybe if
Speaker 1: you have some kind of gland that like squirts like utane. No,
Speaker 1: I just had a thought. Actually, so it's not like Piro.
Speaker 1: But there is in nature, for example, like the Bombardier
Speaker 1: beetle that has a two different chemicals I believe that,
Speaker 1: or maybe even more than two. I'm not sure. I
Speaker 1: haven't looked this up now, but but it has some
Speaker 1: different chemicals that it stores separately in the body, and
Speaker 1: by combining them, I think with a catalyst, it can
Speaker 1: scored out hot corrosive stuff that burns. The chemical burn
Speaker 1: is a little different terrifactual. Yeah, and so that's not
Speaker 1: exactly like PIRO. And I'm not saying you can just
Speaker 1: put some you know, like uh, Bombardier beetle jeans in
Speaker 1: your body and then you can do that. But I'm
Speaker 1: at least trying to think of some way that that
Speaker 1: a an organic body could shoot hot stuff. I too
Speaker 1: totally want to see a bombardeer Beetles superhero now though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I like blue beetle Beetle is pretty cool. But
Speaker 1: really no, it seems like chemical reaction would be probably
Speaker 1: the best way to do that, right, because then you
Speaker 1: could store the potential energy and the body without hurting yourself. Well,
Speaker 1: you have to have some way of making sure that
Speaker 1: that those chemicals remain inert. Yeah, yeah, that's that's definitely
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that you wouldn't want. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: if you, for example, we're being oh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: crushed by saber tooth, you wouldn't want to have those
Speaker 1: those bags crushed outside of you. I'm thinking. I'm thinking, like,
Speaker 1: you go wash your hands after using the restroom, and
Speaker 1: just the rubbing of hands back and forth, you suddenly
Speaker 1: realize you're melting your palms off. That would be awkward. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: to do the ridiculously simple version of this, you just
Speaker 1: strap a flamethrower to your body. Yeah. Colin the guy
Speaker 1: and guy who did the Wolverine claws, essentially he made
Speaker 1: made a rig like this, And again he didn't talk
Speaker 1: about exactly how it worked, but based upon what I saw,
Speaker 1: it looked like he had two different UH tubes mounted
Speaker 1: two risks. One risk acted as the pilot light, so
Speaker 1: it would produce the ignition flame. The second rist was
Speaker 1: what allowed him to project out the fuel whatever it
Speaker 1: was that he was using. I don't know exactly what
Speaker 1: it was, And he was able to project flames several
Speaker 1: feet away from like they extended several feet from his wrists. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was, you know, by bending his Yeah. But both
Speaker 1: Show and I are sitting back in our chairs shaking
Speaker 1: our heads like that sounds like such a tremendously poor decision.
Speaker 1: It was certainly probably well, it was dangerous, Yes, very dangerous,
Speaker 1: and h I do not recommend anyone attempt to build
Speaker 1: such a rig on their own either. But it also
Speaker 1: was pretty wicked cool in the video. But Uh, I
Speaker 1: would never use this thing because I would be afraid
Speaker 1: of setting myself on fire or having a mechanical failure. Um,
Speaker 1: anything that would end up having a fuel he could
Speaker 1: lead to catastrophe. Obviously increa rereadibly dangerous. But he did
Speaker 1: build a suit that essentially replicates the abilities of Pyro
Speaker 1: to shoot flames from his hands, although again using a
Speaker 1: technological approach rather than technologically plausible. Totally certainly, Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is something that we can do a dangerous based pretty
Speaker 1: much off the flamethrower. Yeah. All right, Um, so let's
Speaker 1: talk about Magneto all right. I think as a casual
Speaker 1: X Men fan, I think Magneto is my favorite character. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: er Eric lynch HER's is great. Him and Charles have
Speaker 1: a very terrific relationship, and he's you know, he's well
Speaker 1: thought out to lots of He's really fun to deal
Speaker 1: with because he's got so much going on in his head. Um.
Speaker 1: But his his superpowers are controlling I guess electromagnetic forces,
Speaker 1: in that he can manipulate any magnetic object, which turns
Speaker 1: out to be anything metal and a lot of the
Speaker 1: time and the Marble universe, it doesn't necessarily need to
Speaker 1: be feral magnetic apparently him how he's able to make
Speaker 1: it magnetic anyway, because there there are times Again in Marvel,
Speaker 1: I think things have qualities that are necessary to the plot.
Speaker 1: So in one plot, it may be that adamantium is
Speaker 1: absolutely not magnetic. It cannot be magnetic. In one plot,
Speaker 1: and in another plot, Magneto uses his powers to strip
Speaker 1: all the adamantium off of wolverine skeleton and hurl it away.
Speaker 1: So it all depends on the needs of that story.
Speaker 1: Uh As for the ability to manipulate electro magnetism, that's
Speaker 1: what all of our electronics are largely based on um
Speaker 1: and a lot a lot of powerful systems, like like
Speaker 1: our power grid, are dependent upon the the use of
Speaker 1: electro magnets, and uh so it's one of those things
Speaker 1: that we have a pretty good handle on. We don't
Speaker 1: have an ability to just give someone a glove that
Speaker 1: lets them manipulate at will. Uh an object and levitated
Speaker 1: in the air using magnetism alone that we do not have.
Speaker 1: So while we have a deep understanding of it, we
Speaker 1: also know the limitations. It's sort of like a you know,
Speaker 1: if I have a powerful magnet and I pointed at
Speaker 1: something that has you know that that reacts to magnets,
Speaker 1: it's gonna come toward me. If I'm close enough for
Speaker 1: that to to interact, I can't also be pulled towards it. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: if my mass is great enough, then I'm not I'm not. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'll fill the poll as well, technically both the magnet
Speaker 1: and the object will pull together. But if my mass
Speaker 1: is greater, it's going to come to me. That's what
Speaker 1: I always wondered. So like when Magneto lifts up the
Speaker 1: Golden Gate bridge and moves it, wouldn't wouldn't whatever force
Speaker 1: he's creating just pull him to the bridge. Well, if
Speaker 1: he's creating a completely distinct electro magnetic field from him,
Speaker 1: then no, but it would mean that he would be
Speaker 1: able to create an electromagnetic field that could completely encircle
Speaker 1: something else and he would not be part of that.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, well then that's fine. Yeah, sure, sure. I
Speaker 1: do also want to want to put in here um
Speaker 1: and I actually had never thought about this until we
Speaker 1: were doing this podcast. But y'all, magnetic fields interact with
Speaker 1: electric fields, right, I mean, especially if it's I mean
Speaker 1: right right there. There's stuff that's going on there. So
Speaker 1: you would have to be real careful if you were
Speaker 1: a magneto around computers or electronics of any kind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he walks by your hard drive by Apple headquarters and
Speaker 1: you just hear whales of people inside. That's that's his
Speaker 1: real evil superpower. Why does he bother getting saber tooth
Speaker 1: to do stuff. He could totally be the ultimate like terrorist.
Speaker 1: You could just walk past a Google data center and
Speaker 1: it crashed. The stock market has mutant shielding. It's like
Speaker 1: one of the first things they put. We don't have
Speaker 1: any more mutants in this list. I mean, we've been
Speaker 1: talking for a whole other hours, so we could have
Speaker 1: talked about magneto using electromagnetism to fly and how that
Speaker 1: is not the same as using a superconductor that's been
Speaker 1: super cooled in order to get into quite he's clearly
Speaker 1: just pushing off of our ferromagnetic core of the Earth.
Speaker 1: I think maybe he's just using the Earth's magnetic field
Speaker 1: and attracting to the top of his head to it
Speaker 1: so he floats off the ground. Well, if you want
Speaker 1: to get about as close to being magneto as as possible,
Speaker 1: go back and listen to our episode about biohacking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is you can you can sense the presence of
Speaker 1: a microwave or something like that, and okay, and there
Speaker 1: are here's another point there there are some birds, migrating
Speaker 1: birds that have our migratory I suppose the grammar would
Speaker 1: be there um that can that can sense magnetic fields.
Speaker 1: In that they Uh, there's some kind of chemical reaction
Speaker 1: that goes on in their eyeballs that lets the see
Speaker 1: patterns of light and darkness, allows them to perceive the
Speaker 1: magnetic fields of the Earth in order to do their migrations. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a navigation sure, so so I guess hypothetically, if
Speaker 1: we really figured out how that could work, we could
Speaker 1: at least perceive magnetic So it might be that we're
Speaker 1: not able to move the Golden gate Bridge, but we
Speaker 1: might be able to tell you what direction it is.
Speaker 1: Thanks Magneto, you're a huge help. The Magneto and Apple
Speaker 1: maps we can dominate the world. We need to go
Speaker 1: back through these two podcasts and write down all of
Speaker 1: the incredibly stupid superheroes we've dreamed up with their like
Speaker 1: lame almost powers and see if it actually, like could
Speaker 1: make a team that could do something. No one's going
Speaker 1: to be as lame as arm fall Off Man. But
Speaker 1: that armed oh okay, okay, well that's fair. Arm fall
Speaker 1: Off Boy is essentially what we actually talked about for Wolverines, right,
Speaker 1: So there we go. Uh I think uh, I think
Speaker 1: we are. And of course there are obviously tons more
Speaker 1: mutants in the X Men universe, many of whom have
Speaker 1: powers that overlap the ones we've discussed here. They're probably several,
Speaker 1: uh that are very different from the ones we talked about,
Speaker 1: but we tried to cover a good spectrum so that
Speaker 1: we could tackle as many as we possibly could. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: there's you know, it's it's clear any kind of superhero
Speaker 1: story where you've got true superpowers, it's well beyond our
Speaker 1: human abilities. That's what makes them superhuman. It's what gives
Speaker 1: them the the larger than life mythical status that makes
Speaker 1: those stories what they are. And if you try to
Speaker 1: really explain how they work on a biological level, you
Speaker 1: rapidly run out of explanations and excuses, and then you
Speaker 1: just have to start making stuff up, especially when it
Speaker 1: comes to biological mutations that give you magic. Uh. So
Speaker 1: I hope that that was an entertain discussion. We hate
Speaker 1: certainly had fun doing it. And if you guys have
Speaker 1: any questions that range from just the curious to the
Speaker 1: wildly improbable, I recommend you let us know what those
Speaker 1: questions are. We'll be happy to tackle that in the
Speaker 1: future episode. Just drop us a line, send us an email.
Speaker 1: Our addresses f W Thinking at how Stuff Works dot Com,
Speaker 1: or drop us a line on Google Plus, Twitter or Facebook.
Speaker 1: Google Plus and Twitter has the handle f W Thinking
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Speaker 1: send us a message. We read all of them. We
Speaker 1: look forward to hearing from you, and you'll hear from
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