Superhero Science: StarTalk Live! With Charles Liu

About This Episode

Why can’t we run through walls if atoms are mostly empty space? Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chuck Nice, Gary O’Reilly, and astrophysicist Charles Liu explore force fields, warp drive, invisibility, and quantum physics behind superhero powers.

If Superman swoops in to catch a falling Lois Lane, wouldn’t she hit him like a bug on a windshield? Could his physiology, including his digestive system be super too? And what would happen if Superman’s methane-packed farts met his heat vision? The gang imagines a literal human flamethrower. How can Superman see colors with x-ray vision?

Neil recalls DC Comics once asking him to help Superman find Krypton in the night sky, raising questions about how long it took Superman to get here. Could he have traveled through a wormhole? Or warped spacetime like the Enterprise? Charles explains why folding space might be harder than warping ourselves, and how Miguel Alcubierre’s warp bubble could one day make sci-fi travel real.

We break down the science of invisibility. What would it mean to be truly unseen? The crew explores stealth technology, light-bending metamaterials, and quantum invisibility. Learn about invisible forces, like the Casimir effect and how quantum fluctuations affect our world. We break down how the Flash can walk through walls. If atoms are mostly empty space why aren’t we falling through the floor?

Learn about quantum teleportation, and whether we can use entanglement for quantum communication. We dive into the quantum realm itself with the fictional Pym particles, Dr. Manhattan’s wave function, and the many-worlds theory that spawns infinite universes every second. Neil wonders if that’s a scientific breakthrough or a cosmic cop-out. Charles closes with wisdom: as our knowledge grows, so does the perimeter of our ignorance. In a universe where every possibility happens somewhere, God doesn’t just play dice—He plays all of them at once.

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