More Mutants!

could make us into characters from the X Men. I mean through whatever means necessary. I guess, through genetic manipulation, through uh, cybernetics, through just plain old power suits and liquid nitrogen guns. How can we become Iceman, Magneto, Wolverine, Cyclops. Last time, we already did the original X Men team, And who did that include? It was Professor X, of course, the Professor X, Jean Gray, Scott summers At a Cyclops, Iceman, the Beast Angel, and that's it. Did I name all five?

I think that's it? Plus it was six toe right because Professor X is one of them. Did you say Jean Gray? Did say Jean Gray? Then We're good. Oh the Beast? Did we name the Beast? What is wrong with your brain? I don't know. Well, we've already talked about the original team, but I had to admit last time that I am a what did you call me, Lauren, I'm a fake geek girl. I said that, You're not a fake geek girl. Okay, I'm not a fake geet girl, but I am what you might say as a casual

X Men fan, which is which is fine. I was surprised to hear that the famous Wolverine is not, in fact one of the original X Men. Yeah, he's not. He's he's uh a hanger on the pretender. Um, he's a fake geek girl now as long as as well, so we have to talk about Wolverine. So I figured

that justifies another podcast. Wolverine on his Own could be an entire podcast, especially when you take into account all the different iterations, because I like, by the time we're recording this podcast, which is in November two thousand fourteen, right now, as in the comic book world, Wolverine is dead. It happens to everyone. I mean, well, he's he's died before too, so I don't expect that to be permanent. I don't think it's going to last very long. Though.

I read something online that I was thinking, surely this can't be true. They said that, uh, he at one point was brought back to life from a single drop of his blood. And yes, it's pretty much the case. That's how good is healing factor is? How would he still have his memories and everything? You know? Maybe he didn't. Every single cell in your body has your total in a and it clearly his memories were somehow wrapped up genetically and the rest of it. Uh, the guy's got

an adamantium. The listeners can't hear it. Look, I can apologize for just about any sort of comic book crazy plot you want. I don't necessarily believe what I'm saying, but I can apologize for it. Okay, well, let's go ahead and dive right in and start with with the old wolverine himself. He's got what are his powers? He's got super healing. That's that's a big one. His healing factors was often In fact, super healing might might be

an understatement. It's like hyper healing. Yeah, he essentially he can take damage that would kill any other creature ever, and recover from it. Okay, He's got adamantium claws that extend out of his knuckles. Technically, he has an entire adamantium skeleton, which is not a mutant power. It was added onto a skeleton. The fact that he had this mutant healing power allowed him to survive the process. Yeah, and so and so I think classically that's where that

the claws come in. He has bone claws that adamantium has been bonded to. Okay, so the claws are part of his mutant power that was not surgically added to him. He has bone claws which when magnetos stripped away all the adamantium from wolverine skeletal system. Uh, he's still retained the clause, but now they were just Yeah. He also has adamantium chest hair, doesn't he Oh yeah, yeah, it's it's like a brillo pad. Yeah, that's in fact where

Billow came from. In fact, the harvested from him. And he goes into the factory once a week and they need to clean the school for gifted humans. They just put him face down on the floor, push him back and forth across the floor. He doesn't get his back. It's fine, he'll, he'll, he's um, he's he's lost a lot of dignity over the years. Okay, well, it seems like the sorry logan, I'm sorry fiction. The essential, the essential wolverine power I think we've got to start with

is the healing. Sure. Is there a way that we know of to create hyper healing in humans? Well, not know, but I mean there's there's a lot of work going in obviously to try and find ways to help people heal from injury and illness more effectively. Right, And there are some interesting frontiers at sort of the edges of healing science about what we could do in the future. Because here's one example of the limitations of human healing.

Humans cannot regrow lost limbs. Right, so you you get a little cut in your hand, Well, over time, hopefully that'll close up and and you'll get some scar tissue maybe, but it'll your skin will cover the wound. If you cut your hand off, you're not going to get another one back. It's gone. You might causeplay as as Captain Hook for the rest of your life, right, but that's what I would do, not am. Not all animals are like this, Like, for example, some salamanders, you know, can

regrow lost limbs. You cut off a limb and it will completely reconstruct itself stars. Yeah, and the blueprints are there, right, I mean, so you have the coding information inside your body to make new copies of all the parts you have. You had to have that information because it was with you when you were in embryo, when you were making those parts to begin with. But we've got something that happens in our bodies that prevents us from regrowing lost

limbs once we're an adult. Is there a way that we can access through medical science those pathways to re uh to to sort of give ourselves healing powers that aren't natural to humans as adults. Well, you know, there's a lot of research going into that very thing. In fact um, there's there used to be a belief that once you've got to a certain level of complexity with a biological organism, that is what was the limiting factor, that somehow, if you've got complex enough, then you would

no longer be able to regrow a lost limb. It's like system overload. There's too many things going on. Yeah, it was the dominant thinking for a long time. It now seems like that is no longer the dominant thinking that there are. There's a kind of a sea change in that um and there's been a lot of interesting work, uh, interesting work that has dealt with some experiments that are

fairly gruesome. I mean when you when you look at it from especially if you if you love animals like mice, this might be difficult to hear, but the Tough University Center for Regenerative Medicine and Developmental Biology is looking at ways to boost regenerative powers, mostly through the interaction of cells using electrical charge and how they commune kate in a way to try and stimulate growth um in a

way that normally wouldn't happen in organisms like us. And the way they've tested it is largely by taking things like a mice and cutting toes off of them and then trying to stimulate that. They also looked at activating a gene called lynn A l i N two eight A to help regrow lost bits like toes, and they've actually been successful with that. They were looking at this only after they had already been exploring that particular gene

through cancer research. It was one of those things where they discovered something and thought it was interesting, and now there might be a different application. Cool. So obviously we're not there yet for humans, but I think there is some reason to believe it's possible that in the future medical science could allow us to have regenerative powers that we don't have today. Yeah, I think in the foreseeable future it'll be very limited. It will be things injuries

that are still not um incredibly severe. I imagine that the more severe the injury, the harder it will be to truly regenerate, uh in kind of tissue like that.

I mean, but it's it's promising, and I hope that this research ends up finding its way into medical practices where, you know, in the future, maybe twenty years or so in the future, people who have suffered injuries can have a much better prognosis or even with the combination, I could see potentially the combination of something like a like a three D printed bone and and you know, various various other implants could could help you technologically bond better

with a prosthesis. Yeah, clearly this would be something we'd want to be really careful about because anytime you're talking about stimulating cell growth, there are a lot of other questions that come up. That's like, how do you make sure that that's a controlled growth for example? Okay, so there's another thing I was hearing about in sort of the future of of healing technology, and it was a little electrical implant that DARPA was working on. Does that

have any relevance to this UM? Not really, but it is really fascinating, and I guess Okay, let let me let me explain what this is. Okay. So you've got a lot of nerves throughout your body that are monitoring all of your systems and sending alerts back to your brain whenever there's something wrong, and and that alert might be sudden tissue damage, activate pain, and motor functions, which is how we can pull our hand back very quickly

from a too hot surface. UM. And it's also how your body knows to send the resources to that hand to start healing over the burn. UM. It might also be something like foreign substance detected, Active and immune system UM, which is really rad in general. It lets it lets you uh fight off infections right. UM. However, if you've got an overactive nervous system or an over active immune response,

that is not so rad. UM. That kind of thing can lead to your your body misdiagnosing a problem when there isn't one, which can cause all kinds of trouble, like like your immune system can start attacking healthy tissues in your joints, which is what goes on in arthritis. So darpest idea is to implant like nerve thread sized devices to attach to your nerves that will regulate your nerve impulses, thus helping your immune system be more accurate. Uh,

the technology is not existent yet. This is all very much in the research phase. That the program is called Electrical Prescriptions or elect r X, which is which is very cute. Yeah. Um, partially because they're hoping to reduce our dependency on medications, which can have all of these unpredictable and unpleasant interactions with your other bodily systems. Plus, the more medications you have, the more likely you're gonna

have complications. That sounds that could have be one of the It could be one of the less beloved X men, the one you write just specifically to kill that character, often fake moment of sincere grief among your characters because all the others are far too valuable merchandise wise for you to kill. Off, you died for our development. Okay, but so that sounds really interesting, But so it doesn't sound like a recipe for hyper healing. Yeah, it's more

aimed towards restoring regular healing. I think the best you could possibly get out of this therapy is optimum healing given your body's current resources. Um though, I mean it certainly is interesting, like we've been saying, and the modulation of individual nerves is so potentially huge. I mean, imagine if we could control our body's stress responses, like the impact that that would have on mental health therapies. Sure, or I mean, if you can control the body's response

to pain, that could be a big thing. Like pain is useful if you need you touch a hot stove, you know you need to. But we have more pain than we need is a species? Sure, you could have chronic pain as as a result of something that you have literally no control over. It's not doing you any good anymore. Yeah. Yeah, And there's a host of of related things to to stuff like arthritis, like uh, inflammatory bowel syndrome or fibromyalgia that could also have huge impact

from this kind of research. Cool. Well, okay, so then are there any technological routes we actually know of right now that could accelerate human healing. Well, there's some that we're looking into that haven't necessarily panned out definitively. One of the big ones that I know of is using ultrasonic frequencies to help try and UH and facilitate bones

knitting together after you've broken a bone. So you guys, remember we talked a little bit about a three D printed cast where it has that kind of look almost like a fish net kind of a pattern. Yeah, the reason for that fish net pattern, there are a few of them. One is to allow you to have a cast that's not all gammy and exactly that kind of thing.

But another was the idea of using it to give access to doctors to put UH transmitters, ultrasonic transmitters up against your skin so that you could have those ultrasonic frequencies stimulate your bones so they knit more quickly. It is supposed to facilitate that. However, that being said, there have been several studies with conflicting results about whether or not this actual process is helpful or if it's no

different from healing without the use of ultrasonic frequencies. So it's still questionable as to whether or not this is really useful, and if it is useful, it might be negligible. In other words, it may be useful to the point where the cost of of getting the treatment is not really you know, and it's not justified, Like the speed of the healing isn't so great as to justify that kind of expense when you could be using that equipment for something else. So there's still some question about it.

But that's an example of using technology to try and help people heal more rapidly than they otherwise would. But it doesn't look like we have anything on the table right now that's going to get us anywhere near. You know. Wolverine is kind of like, oh, I got shot thirty seconds ago, and now I'm okay, yeah the Hollywood, Uh I got shot, But I am still fully capable of carrying out my part in this plot until I am no longer relevant. That doesn't work so much. You know,

probably never is when that will happen. I'm I'm guessing never. I try to maintain my relevance as much as possible just in case it ever does kick in, so that they don't get rid of me too quickly. I think shielding is going to be the more important tech technological

system there, but that's probably a whole other episode. Okay, So the realistic future, sman, if we can believe that maybe they will get this regenerative power going, is that you have a superhero who can run into the enemy base, get her arm cut off in the midst of a fight, and then retreat and then grow a new arm in

some months. Maybe maybe what we're thinking, I think I think that's kind of the hope, the ultimate hope is I mean, I mean, no, and it sound it does sound incredibly silly, but but how how incredible would it be to to have victims of industrial accidents or car accidents or military accidents to be able to regain I mean, I mean it's hard for us, being h you know, more or less able bodied humans, to imagine how completely

life destructive that would be. Yeah. Sure, I mean, if we're talking about it as real medical potential, that's totally different thing. But is it a superpower? Comparing comparing it to Wolverine's healing factor, it would be you know, it's kind of like can I lift five hundred pounds? Well, not all at once, but if you give me enough time, I can lift the equivalent of five hundred pounds. That's

not exactly a superpower. That's just a normal power. So the question is can we get this accelerated healing as a normal power. It's still not going to be the crazy thing we see with Wolverine where practically instantaneously he's able to heal, you know, at least superficial wounds. Are you trying to arm wrestle me, Jonathan, No, I would never try to arm wrestle you. Okay, okay, let's move on to the next thing. Adamantium skeleton. Well, obviously this is a no go because if if you can't have

wolverine healing, you can't have an adamantium skeleton skeleton. Also, I don't think adamantium exists. I was about to say, you would have to invent adamantium first. I would want vibranium anyway. Well, but is there anything like this? Can we reinforce the human skeleton? Well, we actually have some examples of grafting other materials onto bone structure. UM. With some bone fracture, surgeons can choose is to perform a bone graft, uh, which would mean taking bone from you

and replacing another part of your bone structure. But they could also do something that's called a zeno graft, which means they would actually take material from a totally different species, like coral. Now, coral is biocompatible with human tissue. However, coral normally would not be strong enough support human weight or human stresses. So you couldn't just replace a bone with coral and expected to be work, you know, to

work the way your bone used to work. But you can process that coral so that's strong enough to withstand the same stress as that a typical human bone would. And uh, and so we there's actually, in fact, my wife knew a teacher who had this done with an eye. Uh, in fact, had an eye surgically implanted. That was a coral I. So it was it was permanently fixed into

his orbital bone. Yeah, she's got some great stories about this guy, like the time his his glass eye before he got the coral implant popped out of a basketball game and caused hilarity to ensue. She's got some great stories about uh and any rate. Uh. We also have plenty of examples of surgeons using metal plates and screws and bolts and things in order to help n help hold bones together, probably so they knit together. But again, this is a case of helping bones heal. It's not

a case of reinforcing the bones or replacing them. And and no, ideally you remove those pieces as soon as the bones are healthy. Right well, And I want to bring up another concern, which is that the bones in your body are not just like rocks in there. They're they're dynamic, living tissues that do things within your body.

You know, your bones have marrow in them that I believe they manufacture red blood cells right, and bones cells themselves are created and destroyed in a natural process throughout the body. There that you know, the bone creation cells and the bone destruction cells, the osteoblasts and the osteoclast. It's not just like you could stick any hard substance in your body where the bone should be and you'll

be good to go. Yeah, right right, And you wouldn't really want to entirely coat your bone and anything, even if that were possible from a from a physiological standpoint, because again, your your bones are doing stuff. Um, they're interacting with other cells in your body and other substances and so if if you coated them, it would be like wrapping plastic wrap around your hand permanently um, which

wouldn't really be too much fun. Not to mention the fact that if you were truly coding every every surface of your bones with something else, you would have to at some point remove tendons from the bones, like you would have to essentially detach all the muscles then reattach all the muscles to get every surface of the bone coated with this stuff. So it's it's it's problematic. It's not a good plan. I think I think that this one.

I I do think that it's potentially possible. Again, you can see in some of the prosthetic research that's being done, and and even in some of the three D printing bone kind of research that's being done. You know, it's it's possible to maybe enforce our bones with stronger stuff. Maybe. Yeah, So this this one is at least for if we're talking about superpowers. I don't think anyone's going to get a full skeleton upgrade anytime soon. I hope not, especially

without factor. Okay, well, what about the marquee event the clause? Oh well, first of all, it's totally possible, but it won't make this nick sound. That's the problem is that it's well, then what's the point while that's at the end of the claw? Okay, no, all right, when you when we're being serious here about installing clause clearly anything that would allow us to be able to extend and

retract them. You guys are sorry. Just an image of I'm sure this has been done before, this joke has happened somewhere in the comics, but of of Wolverine working in a kitchen somewhere, like being the line cook, chopping all the vegetables, and it's just basically ramming his knuckles up and down on the table. You know, for a Canadian,

he's really not that polite at any rate. So, uh, the clause being able to have claws installed in your arms somewhat tricky, I would imagine, you know, well, anytime that you're changing your muscular skeletal system. Yeah, well, okay, what about just some attachable clause. Yeah, that that's actually

been done. There's a guy named Colin Furs or Furs, who is a YouTube personality, and he builds crazy stuff, like not just stuff that relates back to superheroes, but all sorts of bonkers stuff, and he created retractable wolverine claws that are powered by an air compressor. So he actually has to wear a big backpack in order to have these work. And then he has tubes that go from the backpack to the um to the two clause

systems that are worn on the backs of his forearms. Right, so he straps these things onto the backs of his arms. He has a trigger. Pushing the trigger releases the air pressure that allows the clause to extend. He has a second trigger or release or whatever where it cuts off that supply of the clause retract So I guess they're on a spring system. He doesn't actually show how he built it. He just demonstrates them working, and he cackles

a lot, as he should. If I had working retractable wolverine claws trapped to my arms, I would not stop cackling for days. You already cackle a decent amat and I don't even have grads. This is what I'm saying. There'd be at least a two increase in cackling on my part. So anyway, Science his his YouTube videos are amazing, So this one in particular, he shows off how he's

able to extend them and retract them. H And he's able to do that repeatedly until he's run out of compressed air, in which case he has to essentially refill the tank in his backpack. So it's not a lightweight solution. It's not something that you would wear all over the place. It I'm sure it's it's rather heavy, but it was an effective demonstration of a technological approach to the same sort of thing that Wolverine can quote unquote do naturally in the comics. Can he like cut a humby in

half with him and stuff? He did not do it in the video. I am going to guess that he does not have the arms strength for that, even if the claws themselves were somehow sharp enough and could remain sharp enough to do that. Uh he also, you know, you gotta keep in mind this is also very different from having claws embedded in the arm that can extend out from the skin the way it's depicted, at least in the film versions. The claws break the skin every

time he extends them. Oh yeah, well, this is where his super healing capacity also comes in, because it breaks and heals up every time he does it. It's pretty painful, but he says it hurts every time. That's one of the does it does that hurt every time almost every time, And then the times it feels pretty good and they start they start singing from lame is. That's a weird guy anyway. But that I don't know why that would necessarily be because I don't think this supplies to wolverines.

But some animals have claws that are retractable. Not retractable pro tract dial is the word for for that biological mechanism. You've probably seen it in cats. There's a couple of families of mammals that have them. Um, there's a muscle group that allows these these types of critters to to push out their fancy pokey toenails just when they want to use them, which also lets them keep them hidden in a fold of skin the rest of the time, which reduces wear and tear to the claw and also

lets them move more quickly and quietly in certain situations. Right, So these are not retracting fully within the biological system. It's not like they're they're not breaking the skin every time, right, They're just hidden by a fold of skin and then can protract out from that fold, right, But like dogs can't do this. I mean, if your dog hasn't trimmed the toe nails in a while, he's doing a little

tap dance on the kitchen floor. Yes, yeah, that that's why cats generally don't tap dance a lot of many other reasons. But they do amazing choreography they do. It's all very new vau though. Um rum tum tugger is amazing. That's all I'm gonna say. All musical references in this episode and installing this in humans though as we've we've kind of danced around before, no pun intended. Um would be would be real messy. Um, we have to have like first of all, if you're going with a protractile method,

even then you have to change our physiology. You have to create those folds of skin that things could exist within. They would not nearly be the length of wolverine's claws. No, no, And you need to change the bone structure and them and the muscle structure around it. It would that would I don't think I want to even I'm getting real

grossed out just thinking about it. Right. Plus, I mean, as we sort of alluded to earlier, without the magic metal, without the magic healing, this system doesn't even really sound like something you'd want. It sort of only makes sense if you already start with the other magic assumptions exactly. The one thing, if you're talking about breaking the skin every time, you're talking about also inviting infection constantly, right like you're you're talking about opening a wound every time

you want to extend these claws. I also don't really understand, like I've never seen any artists illustration of how the inside of Logan's arm is supposed to look, because you imagine that the clause in order for them to extend out from the forearm through the between the knuckles, essentially it's depicted or just above the knuckles nanobots. Yeah, you wonder, because they would have to retract far enough for him to still be able to bend his wrists, right, So

they couldn't. They couldn't point, They couldn't just be in his hand, the points in his hand, because then he wouldn't be able to flex his wrists at all. He's got pretty beefy arms, though, I think that there's clearly some kind of pockets. He can't bend his wrists anyway inside. Yeah, have you ever seen him bend his wrists? There's so many jokes, but nobody I think. I think we need

to move on from Wolverine real quick. Before we do, I did want to mention that that the two groups of mammals that have these these pro tractile claws are our cats, but both house cats and large cats and also civets. Wolverines definitely don't have this thing. So I think that we should lobby for a name change. He should be the civet. He could also make amazing coffee. But I'm not going to tell you how. Let's move on, Yes, let us move on on that note. Next one Night

Crawler Kurt Kurt Wagner. He's uh what a character man. He's sweet right, Yeah, he was a former Roman Catholic priest in the comics as well, and um a, his his abilities are pretty He's one of those extra bunch. He's one of those ex men that has a bunch of different abilities. Of course, he's the one if you've seen the movies. In the second film he appears, he's the blue one with the tail played by Alan Cumming.

Boy more musical references. I can make more of them now. Yeah, Yeah, I'm kind of upset that they didn't just do a few musical bits on set of at least they haven't released footage of it. Right where Wolverine and Nightcrawlers start singing duets, It would be phenomenal. Yeah, but you're you're the wrong era of musicals there. You have to get much more melodramatic and sad. But uh, yeah. So some of Nightcrawlers abilities are ones that we've already talked about

on this show. Well, one of the main ones obviously is teleportation. Yeah, okay, now that one. Let's save that one for last though. Okay, okay, let's say that one for last. Let's talk about First of all, he's got the ability to kind of be sort of invisible. If he's in the shadows, he can kind of fade in with them. He can't do it in broad daylight, but in the shadows he can fade back enough for him to be effectively invisible. And we've talked about invisibility several

times on Forward Thinking. Yeah, we did a podcast where we talked about, in fact, a bunch of different ways of becoming invisible through technology. There, of course, the meta material methods we've talked about, though those we don't know if that will ever be applicable on the visual spectrum or covering enough of the visual spectrum to really make something truly invisible, but they are already showing promise on the microwave spectrum for sort of narrow bands of frequencies.

So of course, meta materials are these sort of tiny structures that are synthetic, They don't exist in nature, and they can manipulate the way electromagnet the fields bend around them. Right, right, So even if we were to develop a really awesome meta material type that could cover the whole visible spectrum, there's no guarantee that we would be able to make

it movable, right, It may end up being something that. Sure, it's effective if you want to, i don't know, hide the existence of a building away from the the world, but it may not work for something that's going to be jumping around all over the place. Sure, But we

also talked about active camouflage. That kind of seems more reasonable to me for how a creature might not become completely invisible but could pretty well hide, especially in dark conditions, And lots of animals already have this power, So like an octopus can easily blend in with with its surroundings by projecting different colors on its skin to match the

patterns of the surface where it's hiding. Yeah, it would need to have Again, you would have to have a suit that could completely cover you so that you're you're not you know, if your hands in head and are revealed, then it might say like, that's weird that there's a disembodied pair of hands and a head moving around and I can't see anything else attached to it. So that would also be maybe possible in the future with the

right technology. Again, you'd have to be totally covered. One of the active camouflage methods we mentioned in our episode on invisibility tech was the flexible optoelectric camouflage skin and this was done by uh there was a paper on it earlier this year. I think it was August by researchers at the University of Houston and the University of Illinois, and they published paper called Adaptive Optoelectric Camouflage Systems with

designs inspired by cephalopod skins. So this was creating multi layered flat surfaces that could mimic the patterns underneath them to the viewers above sort of like a cephalopod skin would and if you can imagine creating sort of a suit out of the skin, probably make you flawlessly invisible, but could be pretty useful active camouflage for whatever kind

of surroundings you found yourself in. Now, as our call that particular one, I think only worked in various shades of gray for that for that approach, The one they've created so far as only black and white. But they think that they can scale it up and expand its frequency diversity, and so that that's a that's a solid maybe. Uh here's one of the yes column, because we haven't really talked about like a solid hit of a superpower. We can replicate today night vision. We can totally replicate

night vision today using things like night vision goggles. Now that's that's obviously you know, technology on top of you. Yes, yes, there are no implants for that yet. But yeah, that that one's been kicking around since World War Two. So we've got that one covered. Converting infrared light into visible light. Now we do convert that. Whether or not we could ever biologically uh engineers somebody so that they can perceive infrared,

that's an interesting question. Because it would not only require us to be able to pick up infrared signals, but to process them. Uh, it's certainly not biologically impossible. There are animals that exist today, you see, and it's some snakes consense infra red. It's just the question. I don't think it's a seeing infrared as much as uh, tasting it isn't it? Am I incorrect? I don't know? But

that sounds cool. It's it is, certainly it's it's like a taste smell combo really, but it's it's one of those things that while we can see examples of creatures being able to see into spectrums that were not whether that's infrared or ultra violet, the question remains whether or not we can engineer people to do that. That maybe possible in the future. I mean that's one of the sort of the issue with all of these Can we

give a human some kind of animal power? There's always a big kind of question mark, Well, if we can, it's a lot easier to say no, that's definitely not going to happen for some of the crazier powers. Some of these other ones are a little more borderline. Yeah. For For the record, according to a very brief Google search. There there are these little kind of pits on snake faces that control the infrared sensing. Gotcha. Uh, then we've got wall crawling. That crawler can also crawl on walls. Yeah,

we've done whole episodes about that too. About some of the materials that people are using, to the biommicry that people are using to reproduce sticky. Yeah, yeah, sticky often comes down to chemical, but there's also physical. So Uh, there's a researchers that m I T created a carbon nanotube based tape that could, in theory, line the gloves and shoes of a suit, so like a Spider Man's suit if you want to go with a different superhero. Uh. And it clings like glue but can be reused indefinitely.

It doesn't lose its stickiness. It relies on the Vanderwall's force to hold two surfaces together, right, and that's just sort of this tiny molecular level force. It's active a very small scales. Yes, So making sure that you can have something that can support the weight of say your average mutant obviously has its challenges, but it's there's nothing specifically that we know of that would uh prevent us

from being able to do that in the future. Now, we're still ages away from being able to produce anything like that on a large scale, but it's it's theoretically at least possible. So uh, not not a biological approach. We're not biologically changing people to be able to wall crawl. But again, using technology in this case, a a you know, a textile based technology could make it possible. Okay, well, time to get to the easy one, the teleprotation one. Yeah,

totally doable via genetic engineering. Right if you if you happen to be a quantum particle, then maybe people that you could be it that you're ut Yeah, well jerks, Yeah, Lauren, inhabits all states of being simultaneously. It's we just all we've come to accept it, really, I mean, you know, maybe you've come to accept it. I'm still struggling with it. Well only one part are many other parts of you have totally accepted it. Uh So Yeah, it's this is

one that's not going to be possible most likely. Uh, I can't see it. We have talked about telebrotation before, and in fact scientists have looked into teleprotation, but it has been on quantum particles, things like photons or a feature of a quantum particle like it's spin. Uh, and they've been able to teleport things like that. However, that

doesn't scale up. It's not something like you could. You can't say, oh, now that we know how to uh teleport this one, you know, disassemble this one particle and reassemble it elsewhere without actually transporting it across the space where that happened. We can never scale that up to macro size. Yeah. If you want to read a really interesting and clear to to the lay person breakdown of the problems with teleportation, I recommend checking out Lawrence Krauss

is the science of Star Trek. He has a wonderful explanation of everything that's wrong with teleportation and like why it would just be impossible to do this? Yeah, Now we should say that there's nothing that we know of in physics that says it is absolutely impossible for a macro sized object to ever teleport. We just are light years away from ever discovering if that in fact is possible or impossible. Um, it's it's impossible effectively to us

today and likely will be for the foreseeable future. If maybe you know, a thousand years from now we've developed a point where we could do it. Maybe then maybe it turns out that there is a way to do

it for a macro sized object. However, based upon our understanding right now, if we were to do the same sort of approach that we do on the quantum scale, it would mean that you die when you teleport the the you that is you when you hit the button, it ceases to be Yeah, and then a copy of you when you press the button is constructed wherever it was that you were supposed to go with your full memories. Apparently, magically, that's that's in science fiction. Certainly, I don't know that

in reality that would actually happen. It was certainly when your experience as an entity would cease to be. So think of it like if you were to suddenly make a clone of yourself and then someone shot you and you died. You would be gone. Your clone would continue to live, but you your experience would in the same sort of thing essentially, except instead of making a clone of you that exists at the same time you're making a you're you're stopping your existence and starting a clones

existence practically simultaneously. Yeah, but then again, how do you know that that you didn't die one second before every single second of your life, and you're just under the illusion that your experience of consciousness is continuous. Well, Joe, how do you not How do you know for a fact that that clone of you isn't a better person than you are and therefore it's a better How do

you know that you're alive at all? Okay, philosophically thinking, I'm gonna go with telebrotation being bad because I want to continue my existence as long as I possibly. Yeah, okay, what about his tail? Prehensile tail? Pretty cool? Right? Monkeys have them? Yeah, whole whole bunches of mammals have them, Various monkeys and eaters, porcupines, mice, possums, and etcetera. Um, I see zero reasons why we couldn't design robotic prosthetic

tales that had function pretty well. Oh, I would be surprised if that wasn't one of the easier things to genetically engineer and humans, especially because sometimes atavistic tales appear in human babies without technological asia. Sure, I don't believe that I've never read an account of anyone even being able to to consciously control one. But if you're talking about prehensile, then that does suppose that you would have

some some measure of control. Yeah, yeah, a pretty a pretty large measure of control, a very advanced nervous and and muscle system going on. It would definitely require some massive changes in the fashion industry. Well, I mean, there there is some reasonable care technology. I believe I've heard before that the tales these aren't genes we lost. We still have the genes to make a tail. We just basically have another gene that says don't well, and and

again in order to have a prehensile one. I think the technology approached, like the actual robotic tail that that ties into our system some other way, is the more likely early version of being able to have a tail. If you want to, I could also imagine a science fiction future where people get you know, they get the tail. Either they design like a flesh press that yeah tail,

something like that. Either that or or people have chosen to genetically alter the next generation to have tales, because that is now so only the thing that people think is awesome. Like, I gotta imagine at least a science fiction story that follows that kind of thing. Whether or not it ever becomes true, I don't know. I will tell you that there are robotic tales you can buy right now. You guys are familiar with them, that there

are super creepy conventions for this. Let's not judge Joe, come on, sorry, but but you know the the you've heard about the ears right that that respond to brain waves. They're supposed to indicate what your mood is. You know, they perk up or they they fold down. That kind of thing, very popular. They came out in Japan. Uh so did the tails. So the tails are essentially the same sort of thing. It's supposed to read your emotional state and then translate that into the various poses that

the tail can take, including things like wagging um. And I included a picture in our notes just so people can see it. But just so people can see it, the people be Joe and Lauren. Uh I knew about these. I've known about him for a while because come on, I covered technology and so eventually I'm going to find out about it. Yeah, you might have seen these because they were on the internet. So I actually was following this before it became a full product, when it was

still in development and Uh. I remember I interviewed a person named Shannon Morse for tech stuff who's a friend of mine, and she has a pair of the ears, and I asked her about the tale and she was fully on board. So there's a market for it. Okay, well, let's talk about a different X Men, X Man X person. Let's talk about it. If person sounds like they died, we talked about this in the last episode. Okay, how about Storm? What about Storm? I want to talk about

her in her abilities. Yes, I also thought she was one of the original X Men. Mostly you can't have more than one girl, and in an original Most of the most of the depictions of the X Men rely on the the lineup that came after the original group, especially since a lot of the ones like uh like Beasts, transformed further into in the later versions of the X Men. Okay, well, Storms powers pretty obviously are controlling the weather. Yeah. Uh, I don't know how mutant powers give you like, I

don't know what the biological it explained at all. But But also, Aurora is a very um Aurora. Sorry I think I said Aurora. There is a very kind of mystical X Men. She she's portrayed almost as as a goddess in in a lot of mythologies. She's like more like Thor than like Wolverine. Not not quite, not quite to that level. But yeah, but they never really bother explaining her. She's just kind of like, well, to be fair, they don't bother to explain most of them. It's just

when you come down. It's not that I've read. I'm sure you know. Please please write in if I'm completely incorrect. Well, to be fair, there been mountains of materials written about these characters, and we there's no way we could have read all of it. But at any rate, Storm's ability is to influence the weather to the point where she can make storms appear out of nowhere. She can ice and driving, she can even fly. She can manipulate the air enough so that she's able to support herself and

fly around that way. Yeah, so I think the first thing to note would be that this is pretty obviously not something that a person can do with their body, right, But yeah, the more abstracted version is, well, can you at least build a machine that would do some of this stuff and you could wheel it around with you?

So essentially the Cobra commander weather controlled of us. We we've actually talked a little bit, well not about the Cobra Commander one, maybe maybe about that one too, but we've talked about controlling the weather in a couple other episodes, and how essentially impossible it really is, especially given the fact that we don't know what the weather is doing right now. I I mean, like, like we don't understand the systems enough to really be able to control them.

There's so many factors that go into weather systems and so many variables that can change, like we don't know. We don't know which variables are necessarily the most important. We know that there are big ones like temperature, pressure of that kind of stuff, but we don't necessarily know which ones are the ones that are going to make a system produce let's say, six inches of rain versus a system that doesn't end up raining at all, And from our measurements, it looks like both were more or

less identical up to a point. And so it's very tricky to even know what weather is going to be like in uh within a span of a day, much less be able to manipulate it so that we can make it do what we wanted to do. Um. Also, weather systems like big storm systems have tons of energy, I mean a massive amount of energy going into it. We talked about how if you want to to equate that to uh energy that we would produce, You're talking about nuclear bomb levels of energy. And so it's just

not something that you can practically do. And you know, we've seen some weather um some weather manipulation techniques like cloud seating, but we don't even really know how effective that is or if it's effective at all. Again, unless you are able to somehow magically do the same experiment twice, once where under exact conditions you are able to seed the clouds and see if it makes rain, and once when you don't seed the cloud and see if those

same conditions would produce rain. You can't really be certain. Uh Now, whether or not cloud seating works is not the topic of this episode. We could we could go into tons of papers that have been written that either support it or contested Chu. I think that they've done some some good research on that over on stuff they don't want you to know. Yeah, the point that we're just going to pass the buck over to them, but sorry,

they love to be asked that question. Um, but no, seriously, like like we were, it's really just driving home the point that this is really complex. These are high energy systems and we just don't have the knowledge, let alone the technology to to change it. Oh sure, sure, but you know, caveat if you're talking about causing environmental changes in an immediate controlled area. You know, air pressure, heat and cold, moisture, electrostatic discharges, directed gusts of air were

totally aces at those things. We have fans, yeah, yeah, and not of the show. We have been pushing air devices fans, oscillating devices that create airflow. You could simulate lightning with, you know, some kind of Tesla coil like device. Oh sure, sure, you know, for some of these things you really need to be in a sea old or sealable room. Um. For For others we could design relatively on the go devices. But again, the real problem here is the is the energy requirements, Like like you were

saying a moment ago um. And also any handheld versions of a lot of these things would be super dangerous. I would not personally want to be carrying around a Tesla coil. That sounds enormously bad. Yeah, there's not enough Faraday cage in the world to make me do that, part of you would still be holding the device. So yeah, I mean I've seen Faraday like suits where people got

zapped by Tesla coils, which looks really awesome. Yeah. I don't know that I want to wear one anytime soon, but if you have one, let me know, because I can change my mind under the right circumstances. You'll either send us a video or or let us know if we can come try it on. This is where we try and find out if architect listens to our show. Okay, well, now I've got one that's pretty easy, but also in a kind of disappointing way. Okay, Pyro, I mean, well, heck,

this one's pretty solid. I mean, basically all you need is a flamethrower. I mean, is kind of dumb. Well, I mean when you when you think of it this way, like, the ability to shoot flames from your body and not be harmed by that fire would be pretty handy, you know, But that's also the aspect of his power that is

really not doable. I mean, I can't see that there no matter what kind of genetic tampering you do, I don't think there's any way you can shoot fire out of your body and not be harmed, but you'd still need a fuel source, is the thing. Even if you could somehow control your immediate body temperature to rise to to but the ignition point of whatever material, you would still need the material. You've got to have the three

things right. You need heat, oxygen, and fuel. So you'd have to be supplying some sort of fuel, maybe if you have some kind of gland that like squirts like utane. No, I just had a thought. Actually, so it's not like Piro. But there is in nature, for example, like the Bombardier beetle that has a two different chemicals I believe that,

or maybe even more than two. I'm not sure. I haven't looked this up now, but but it has some different chemicals that it stores separately in the body, and by combining them, I think with a catalyst, it can scored out hot corrosive stuff that burns. The chemical burn is a little different terrifactual. Yeah, and so that's not exactly like PIRO. And I'm not saying you can just put some you know, like uh, Bombardier beetle jeans in

your body and then you can do that. But I'm at least trying to think of some way that that a an organic body could shoot hot stuff. I too totally want to see a bombardeer Beetles superhero now though, Yeah, like I like blue beetle Beetle is pretty cool. But really no, it seems like chemical reaction would be probably the best way to do that, right, because then you could store the potential energy and the body without hurting yourself. Well, you have to have some way of making sure that

that those chemicals remain inert. Yeah, yeah, that's that's definitely the kind of thing that you wouldn't want. I mean, like, if you, for example, we're being oh, I don't know, crushed by saber tooth, you wouldn't want to have those those bags crushed outside of you. I'm thinking. I'm thinking, like, you go wash your hands after using the restroom, and just the rubbing of hands back and forth, you suddenly

realize you're melting your palms off. That would be awkward. Okay, Well, to do the ridiculously simple version of this, you just strap a flamethrower to your body. Yeah. Colin the guy and guy who did the Wolverine claws, essentially he made made a rig like this, And again he didn't talk about exactly how it worked, but based upon what I saw, it looked like he had two different UH tubes mounted two risks. One risk acted as the pilot light, so

it would produce the ignition flame. The second rist was what allowed him to project out the fuel whatever it was that he was using. I don't know exactly what it was, And he was able to project flames several feet away from like they extended several feet from his wrists. Um, yeah, it was, you know, by bending his Yeah. But both Show and I are sitting back in our chairs shaking our heads like that sounds like such a tremendously poor decision.

It was certainly probably well, it was dangerous, Yes, very dangerous, and h I do not recommend anyone attempt to build such a rig on their own either. But it also was pretty wicked cool in the video. But Uh, I would never use this thing because I would be afraid of setting myself on fire or having a mechanical failure. Um, anything that would end up having a fuel he could

lead to catastrophe. Obviously increa rereadibly dangerous. But he did build a suit that essentially replicates the abilities of Pyro to shoot flames from his hands, although again using a technological approach rather than technologically plausible. Totally certainly, Yeah, this is something that we can do a dangerous based pretty much off the flamethrower. Yeah. All right, Um, so let's talk about Magneto all right. I think as a casual

X Men fan, I think Magneto is my favorite character. Yeah. Yeah, er Eric lynch HER's is great. Him and Charles have a very terrific relationship, and he's you know, he's well thought out to lots of He's really fun to deal

with because he's got so much going on in his head. Um. But his his superpowers are controlling I guess electromagnetic forces, in that he can manipulate any magnetic object, which turns out to be anything metal and a lot of the time and the Marble universe, it doesn't necessarily need to be feral magnetic apparently him how he's able to make it magnetic anyway, because there there are times Again in Marvel, I think things have qualities that are necessary to the plot.

So in one plot, it may be that adamantium is absolutely not magnetic. It cannot be magnetic. In one plot, and in another plot, Magneto uses his powers to strip all the adamantium off of wolverine skeleton and hurl it away. So it all depends on the needs of that story.

Uh As for the ability to manipulate electro magnetism, that's what all of our electronics are largely based on um and a lot a lot of powerful systems, like like our power grid, are dependent upon the the use of electro magnets, and uh so it's one of those things that we have a pretty good handle on. We don't have an ability to just give someone a glove that lets them manipulate at will. Uh an object and levitated in the air using magnetism alone that we do not have.

So while we have a deep understanding of it, we also know the limitations. It's sort of like a you know, if I have a powerful magnet and I pointed at something that has you know that that reacts to magnets, it's gonna come toward me. If I'm close enough for that to to interact, I can't also be pulled towards it. Well, yeah, if my mass is great enough, then I'm not I'm not. Yes, I'll fill the poll as well, technically both the magnet and the object will pull together. But if my mass

is greater, it's going to come to me. That's what I always wondered. So like when Magneto lifts up the Golden Gate bridge and moves it, wouldn't wouldn't whatever force he's creating just pull him to the bridge. Well, if he's creating a completely distinct electro magnetic field from him, then no, but it would mean that he would be able to create an electromagnetic field that could completely encircle something else and he would not be part of that.

Oh okay, well then that's fine. Yeah, sure, sure. I do also want to want to put in here um and I actually had never thought about this until we were doing this podcast. But y'all, magnetic fields interact with electric fields, right, I mean, especially if it's I mean right right there. There's stuff that's going on there. So you would have to be real careful if you were a magneto around computers or electronics of any kind. Yeah, he walks by your hard drive by Apple headquarters and

you just hear whales of people inside. That's that's his real evil superpower. Why does he bother getting saber tooth to do stuff. He could totally be the ultimate like terrorist. You could just walk past a Google data center and it crashed. The stock market has mutant shielding. It's like one of the first things they put. We don't have

any more mutants in this list. I mean, we've been talking for a whole other hours, so we could have talked about magneto using electromagnetism to fly and how that is not the same as using a superconductor that's been super cooled in order to get into quite he's clearly just pushing off of our ferromagnetic core of the Earth. I think maybe he's just using the Earth's magnetic field and attracting to the top of his head to it

so he floats off the ground. Well, if you want to get about as close to being magneto as as possible, go back and listen to our episode about biohacking. Yeah, which is you can you can sense the presence of a microwave or something like that, and okay, and there are here's another point there there are some birds, migrating birds that have our migratory I suppose the grammar would be there um that can that can sense magnetic fields.

In that they Uh, there's some kind of chemical reaction that goes on in their eyeballs that lets the see patterns of light and darkness, allows them to perceive the magnetic fields of the Earth in order to do their migrations. Right, yeah, it's a navigation sure, so so I guess hypothetically, if we really figured out how that could work, we could at least perceive magnetic So it might be that we're not able to move the Golden gate Bridge, but we might be able to tell you what direction it is.

Thanks Magneto, you're a huge help. The Magneto and Apple maps we can dominate the world. We need to go back through these two podcasts and write down all of the incredibly stupid superheroes we've dreamed up with their like lame almost powers and see if it actually, like could make a team that could do something. No one's going to be as lame as arm fall Off Man. But that armed oh okay, okay, well that's fair. Arm fall Off Boy is essentially what we actually talked about for Wolverines, right,

So there we go. Uh I think uh, I think we are. And of course there are obviously tons more mutants in the X Men universe, many of whom have powers that overlap the ones we've discussed here. They're probably several, uh that are very different from the ones we talked about, but we tried to cover a good spectrum so that we could tackle as many as we possibly could. Ultimately, there's you know, it's it's clear any kind of superhero story where you've got true superpowers, it's well beyond our

human abilities. That's what makes them superhuman. It's what gives them the the larger than life mythical status that makes those stories what they are. And if you try to really explain how they work on a biological level, you rapidly run out of explanations and excuses, and then you just have to start making stuff up, especially when it comes to biological mutations that give you magic. Uh. So I hope that that was an entertain discussion. We hate

certainly had fun doing it. And if you guys have any questions that range from just the curious to the wildly improbable, I recommend you let us know what those questions are. We'll be happy to tackle that in the future episode. Just drop us a line, send us an email. Our addresses f W Thinking at how Stuff Works dot Com, or drop us a line on Google Plus, Twitter or Facebook. Google Plus and Twitter has the handle f W Thinking Just search f W thinking at Facebook will pop right up,

send us a message. We read all of them. We look forward to hearing from you, and you'll hear from us again really soon. For more on this topic in the future of technology, I visit forward Thinking dot Com, brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places,