This episode of Because Science
is sponsored by Captive State.
This is how Captain Marvel survives space.
Even in the most extreme environments
earth has to offer you can find life.
Life under constraint is simple
but these so-called extremophiles survive and thrive.
For example, here in the Atacama Desert
a place so desolate that NASA uses it
as a stand-in for Mars
you can find cyanobacteria here
photosynthesizing and dividing
and doing whatever else they do.
Deep below the ocean's surface
you can find the extremophilic archaea Pyrococcus
surviving and thriving under pressure
pushing down on them equivalent to that
at the very bottom of the Mariana Trench.
(water bubbling)
As far as we know though
there are no what I call cosmophiles
organisms specifically adapted
to survive and thrive in space.
So what would it take
to turn one of the most extreme environments
that we know of into your playground?
(upbeat music)
This thought experiment comes to us from Captain Marvel.
In the comics and the film the Carol Danvers
version of Captain Marvel is cosmically powerful.
Souped up with genetics accidentally rewritten
by technology possessed by aliens called the Kree.
Aside from the energy blasts and flight though,
the superpower that really stands out to me
is Carol's ability to survive
in the vacuum of space unprotected.
Space is basically the opposite
of everything complex life needs.
So what would have to change
physiologically and genetically
in order to make Captain Marvel
or a human like you or me able to withstand
prolonged void exposure?
We've talked about the potential dangers
of unprotected exposure to vacuum
many times on this program
but let's go even more into detail this time
just so we can figure out ways
to counteract all these dangers.
By far the most pressing problem in space
is the lack of pressure and what that
lack of pressure does to your body's fluids.
Consider here a cup of water at sea level.
Now at sea level you just have the cup of water
with some water in it but there's also some
water vapor above that water in the gaseous phase
that depends on the ambient pressure.
Now if I raise this glass of water in altitude
the ambient pressure will go down
and so the water is encouraged by physics
to make more random jumps into the gaseous phase.
If I raise this cup even higher
the ambient pressure goes even lower
and the cup may start just boiling all by itself
no heat needed because the internal
vapor pressure of the liquid is higher
than the ambient pressure around it.
Remove the pressure around a gas
and that gas will expand too
and if that gas is in a vessel
the gas can expand so much
that the vessel itself pops.
(balloon popping)
And I bring this up
boiling, bloating, and popping because in space,
more or less the same thing happens to you.
(balloon popping)
Huh.
(exclaims)
Just so we can ignore reality for a second
in space the pressure is effectively zero
and so just like liquids and gases on earth
can boil and expand as the ambient pressure is lowered.
In space the human body when exposed to vacuum
will have all of its bodily fluids boil.
This can lead to a grotesque bloating
(popping)
(stretching)
of the human body up to two times the normal size.
The good news is that you probably won't
pop like a balloon because the human body
has skin that is fairly elastic.
The bad news is this isn't even the worst part.
When you breathe in air on earth,
the oxygen in that air is at a higher pressure
than the oxygen flowing around in the tissues
in your lungs' alveoli the little tiny sacs
inside of your lungs that help exchange gas
with the atmosphere so you know you can respirate.
But in space again it's effectively
at zero pressure and so instead of air going in.
If you try to breathe in space
all of the gases in your blood will go out
(air hissing)
exchange themselves with the void
leaving you with almost nothing
and it will exchange violently.
If you find yourself in space
your first instinct might be to hold your breath
but you can't hold your breath in space.
Because of the lack of pressure,
you will just have one atmosphere
or thereabouts of pressure 14.7 pounds per square inch
inside of your airways that wants to get out.
And so it will violently force its way out
along with all of the other gases in your blood.
As it does so it will freeze your airways
and your tongue and then all of that
deoxygenated blood will make its way
to your brain and in about 10 seconds
you will lose consciousness and you will have ruptured
(loud pop)
all of your delicate lungs' infrastructure.
Oh, it's way
(unclear)
(deflating)
(crackling)
If we wanted to move around in space
like Captain Marvel we'd have to deal
with space's other dangers as well.
Space is unbelievably cold but oddly enough
it's very hard to cool down in space.
Without any air without anything touching you
the only way to exchange heat
with the environment is through radiation
the slowest and least efficient heat transfer mechanism.
So despite what you may have seen in the movies
immediately freezing over when exposed
to the void isn't really realistic.
What would happen is your eyes might frost over
and your tongue as well as moisture boils off of them.
But there's not much in the way of actual cooling.
A body floating around in the vacuum of space
will have to deal with another kind of radiation too.
Cosmic rays and ultraviolet radiation from stars
will slam into your skin increasing your risk of cancer
and damaging and destroying DNA
and giving you severe sunburn in just seconds.
If Captain Marvel wait wait wait wait
(exhales)
(sizzling)
(inhales)
Knowing all the dangers facing Danvers
now we can start speculating about
the kinds of changes that would make
a humanoid more space worthy.
Let's start by looking at a group
of basically aquatic people.
(cries)
(crashes)
Do you know what your spleen does?
It's okay, I forgot too.
Your spleen stores white blood cells
and platelets and most importantly for our purposes
a reserve volume of red blood cells.
These red blood cells carry oxygen
and so when you need them your spleen
can squeeze this reserve volume into
your bloodstream to help us get more oxygen
into our blood to help us function in
low oxygen environments like deep underwater.
(exclaims)
(splash)
In 2018 scientists reported in the journal "Cell"
that they had found something very curious
in the bodies of southeast asian men and women
who spent most of their days diving.
These so-called sea nomads had giant spleens.
Spleens 50% larger than the average person's.
After hundreds or even thousands of years
of this population of people subjecting themselves
to the most extreme low O2 environments
that we know of every day on purpose.
Evolution had selected genetically
for them to have larger spleens
which would give them larger
red blood cell reserves which allowed them
to go for longer without breathing underwater.
This is a genetic change and points us
in the right direction for what would have to change
genetically in Captain Marvel.
Before we get there though we should
examine one more animal the only animal
to ever survive the vacuum of space.
Oh
(splash)
Water bears, moss piglets, tartigrades
whatever you want to call them.
These little animals
Scott! Could you help me out?
These little animals are arguably
the heartiest animals on earth.
Water bears have some absolutely crazy stats.
Some species can withstand crushing pressures
of up to six thousand atmospheres.
That's like surviving being crushed
between my two hands if I was pushing
with half a million pounds of force.
Tardigrades can withstand five thousand grades worth
of radiation this is thousands of times
more radiation than you or I can survive and yes
that includes even cockroaches this is higher than.
Water bears can survive in subzero temperatures
for thirty years and most famously
in an experiment in 2007 water bears survived
direct exposure to space for an entire 10 days.
We don't exactly know how the water bear
accomplishes all these crazy numbers
but we know it has something to do
with cryptobiosis which is a metabolic response
to harsh conditions.
When exposed to something like the vacuum of space
a water bear's metabolism slows way down
to just a fraction of what it was
and it loses all but 1% of its water.
Whatever Captain Marvel's genetics are doing
they are likely tardigradian in function if not form.
Moss piglets return to me!
That's my superpower.
(exclaims)
Now we have all the variables
the characteristics of void exposure
and animal solutions to similar-ish problems.
So now we can start thinking about what the Kree's
technology did to Brie's body in the movie.
(laughs)
Play nice
(yells)
Canonically Kree augmentation
made Captain Marvel's skin here
denser than the average person
and she is stronger than the average person
and she wears a dope suit.
These story elements help us in one of two ways.
First, her denser skin may be able to more resist
expansion when the fluids in her body boil
and that suit may be able to counteract
some of the pressure differentials
and keep more of her body's fluid
fluid for longer and help prevent
any potential air embolisms.
Captain Marvel's density and strength
may allow her to hold her breath in space as well.
What if she had a super human epiglottis?
The thing in your throat that allows you to eat
without inhaling your food.
If this was superhumanly strong
it could act as a strong valve.
Which would seal off her respiratory system
and allow her to carry around
a kind of portable atmosphere
and resist the pressure of the air
trying to get back out so that she could
hold her breath in space and survive for longer.
(exclaiming)
(air escaping)
(crackling)
(inhales)
Revive within 90 seconds so I'm probably fine
with no lasting effects.
Specialized Kree genetics could also help
solve the void's other problems.
Scott!
(yelling)
Weird.
Taking a cue from tardigrades
genetic changes to Captain Marvel's DNA
could make it a lot less susceptible
to radiation damage.
If Danvers was out in space having her body
bombarded by cosmic rays etc.
Her DNA augmented by the Kree could start
expressing more protective proteins
and efficient genetic repair mechanisms
that we know organisms Like the tardigrade have.
One of these proteins "Dsup"
short for damage suppression is unique to tardigrades
and can for example reduce the amount of
genetic damage by x-rays by up to 40%.
So it's plausible the superhuman Kree genetics
might be even more resistant.
Big me up Scotty!
(exclaiming)
The last way to make Captain Marvel more
void ready is a bit more radical.
We could just straight up change her organs.
If humans on earth can evolve larger spleens
to deal with low O2 environments
it's not that crazy to think that
specialized Kree genetics and therefore organs
could make her more resistant to the perils of space
or there could be something more fundamental going on.
In every single air breathing vertebrae
that we know of that we've studied
there's what we call an innate diving reflex.
In response to being underwater the bodies of
creatures such as we have our homeostasis' hijacked.
Blood is diverted away from the skin
and towards internal organs.
Heart rate slows way down and spleens release
those red blood cells that we talked about earlier.
This response is so successful in preparing us
for low O2 environments like being underwater
that I'm going to come up with and suggest
another reflex for Captain Marvel.
How about an innate spacing reflex
that in response to some trigger
takes everything that we've talked about so far
in terms of suggestions and perfectly
primes her body for space.
And the trigger doesn't even have to be
that complicated I mean to trigger the innate
diving reflex all you have to do is hold your breath
(inhales)
(water splashing)
(exhales)
and wet your nose, your nostrils and your face.
My underpants are wet.
So how does Captain Marvel survive space?
Well the Kree's would have to make a lot of changes
but all of them are kind of plausible?
With super density and super strength
she might be able to handle the lack of pressure
in space and with some kind of innate spacing reflex
in response to the void her body could trigger
a cascade of physiological responses in her DNA
and in her organs that would make her more void ready.
Of course she wouldn't want to spend
all of her time in space indefinitely
but she would be able to spend with
all these changes a lot more time in space
than you or I could.
And with all these changes she would definitely
be a hero to Marvel at because science!
Now I'm off to save the MCU with time travel probably.
(upbeat music)
Of course we could go even further
and augment Captain Marvel's body such that
she stops looking so humanoid
we could put a nictitating membrane over her eye
which would effectively seal her eye off
so that the moisture can stay in there
and her eyes wouldn't you know kind of boil
and get covered in frost as she went into space
but you know maybe she doesn't have that freezing problem
because her eyes are on fire!
Thanks again to Captive State
for sponsoring today's episode.
From the director of Rise of the Planet of the Apes
comes Captive State.
Set in a Chicago neighborhood
nearly a decade after an occupation
by an extraterrestrial force.
Captive State explores the lives
on both sides of the conflict.
The legislature and the resistance.
Ten years later Gabriel
the catalyst for the resistance
rises as their leader sparking a fire
that ignites the war for the world.
Watch Captive State in theaters March 15th.
Thank you so much for watching Douglas
and thank you to the super nerds
on the Tough SF discord for their help on this episode.
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(laughs)
(upbeat music)