The Fantastic Four are back!
The Thing, Human Torch, Invisible Woman
and Mister Fantastic come together
to save the world.
This reboot has a new origin story about
how the quartet became so Fantastic.
Something involving alternate dimensions.
But here at Reactions, we kick it old school.
We know from the comics that the Fantastic
Four got their powers the same way Hulk,
Daredevil and Spider Man did.
Radiation.
[Intro]
More comics in a second, but first a word on radiation.
Starting with the word itself.
Radiation gets kind of a bad rap.
But radiation is just energy that comes from
a source and travels through space.
Light, sound and heat are all forms of radiation.
For the most part, these kinds are harmless.
Yes, ALL of them are bad in large quantities.
They can make you blind, deaf or … on fire.
But that’s not the kind of radiation
that gives our heroes superpowers.
To get superpowers you'd need way more energy
than sound, visible light, or heat can provide.
So what would it take?
For more, here’s Professor Dan Claes.
“Gamma rays, like the ones that hit
the Hulk, are one form of radiation.
They’re intense bursts of light
that pack a LOT of energy.
Way more than ordinary visible light.
Where does that energy come from?
Radioactivity.
Atoms that are unstable are called “radioactive”.
You’ve probably heard that before.
These unstable atoms are trying to get some stability in their lives.
A radioactive atom spits out particles
or gamma rays as it decays.
Since these particles and rays come from
the atom's nucleus, they're together
called nuclear radiation.
Depending on the type of atom,
this nuclear radiation can contain
enough energy to penetrate objects.
Things like, say, human skin.
Inside the body, this nuclear radiation may
change the makeup of some of your cells,
sometimes killing them.
In medicine, we've learned how to use controlled
nuclear radiation to kill cancer cells.
But uncontrolled nuclear radiation runs
around amok and can cause cancer.
In fictional universes, the changes can
also give someone super-powers.“
Let’s go back to the Fantastic Four.
In issue one, four astronauts took off and found
themselves tossed around in a cosmic ray storm.
Cosmic rays are atomic shrapnel and nuclear
radiation that flood the universe – atoms
throughout our galaxy, and in galaxies far,
far away, that have energetically decayed
or maybe blasted out of exploding stars.
Now, we get exposed to cosmic rays all day every day.
They pass right through you, as much
as a thousand times a second.
Since we’re about two thirds water, the cosmic
ray particles mostly just ... tickle the water
molecules in our body and move on.
But the dose the Fantastic Four received was MUCH
higher than we receive on the earth’s surface.
In the Van Allen radiation belt that
surrounds the earth well above our
atmosphere, rates can be stupid high.
Instead of a thousand times a second,
the Four probably were hit around
15 million times a second.
If there was a solar flare during that storm,
it would have been ten times that!
So just like a little breeze on Earth doesn’t
do anything, a storm can do a lot of damage.
When they crash land, boom, they’ve got superpowers.
That’s where the comic book magic comes in.
“We’ve got about 75 trillion cells in our body.
Even if the Four were hit with the same number
of cosmic rays as cells in the body, it doesn’t
mean each cell was hit with one cosmic ray.
Some will be missed entirely while
neighboring cells might be hit twice…or more!
Imagine the human torch flaming on for the first
time, with only 63% of his cells transformed?
Ouch!
The odds of the cosmic rays transmuting all
75 trillion of each of the fantastic four’s cells,
in the same superhuman way, and
giving them each a different ability,
(fire, stretchiness, rock and invisibility)
is pretty out there. “
But hey, that’s why we love superheroes.
They do stuff we can’t do.
So just enjoy the movie.
But please don’t yell out the scientific inaccuracies.
Save that for the Internet.
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Big thanks to professor Dan Claes for
his combined love of the Fantastic Four
and physics, and the SciPop series
for making this video possible.
And hey, thanks for watching.