Breathing Life into Superheros 101
From Gulliver’s Lilliputians to Marvel’s Ant Man, how can we ease their breathing process? This off-the-wall question is surprisingly, a topic of research.
Shrunken size gives them an edge over the other superheroes in terms of power, but with great power comes great difficulty — the difficulty in breathing. The theory of insect-inspired breathing by Anne Staples, at Virginia Tech, has been proposed to help the shrunken breathe better.
Any ardent follower of the Marvel Cinematic Universe would primarily elaborate on the strengths of the superheroes. Ever wondered how difficult would it be for them to breathe while transforming into the size of an insect and still doing wonders? This unusual and noble thought struck Max Mikel-Stites, an undergraduate student working with Staples.
Eureka! The solution to the problem was right in front of the duo — The Microfluidic Technology.
The science of applying fundamentals of Fluid Dynamics at a micro-scale was the brainchild of Staples. She explains in her findings that
“Animals create heat in amounts proportional to their body’s volume but dissipate heat in amounts proportional to their body’s surface area. So small animals, having high surface area-to-volume ratios, tend to dissipate heat at high rates and hence lose their warmth”.
To compensate for the heat loss, they need faster metabolism. Animals that are smaller in size, hence produce more heat and require more oxygen as compared to larger ones.
Assuming that the masses of Ant-Man and the Wasp scaled down by eight orders of magnitude when they shrank down to insect size, it meant their total metabolic rates would only scale down by six orders of magnitude. The above-mentioned assumption indicates a per-unit mass 100 times greater than the superheroes would have when they are human-sized. So, they would need 100 times more oxygen to function.
Working along this assumption, when Scott Lang breathes at his normal size, he inhales a fixed number of oxygen molecules. After shrinking down to Ant-size, he still needs the same amount of oxygen. On the contrary, he takes in quite less with each breath. The condition is analogous to what Mt. Everest climbers experience in the summit’s fatal “death zone” at 7,998 meters above mean sea level. Most probable response to these circumstances is breathing more rapidly to facilitate bringing in more oxygen, and avoid headache, dizziness and other ill effects common to altitude sickness.
Coming to the rescue of the Superheroes, microfluidic devices, the kind Staples and her Marvel inspired team developed, could help. Insects and humans evolved strikingly different breathing methodology according to the different scales at which they live. According to Staples, most of the insects collapse their tracheal pathways when they breathe. No two insects perform it in an identical way, but mostly it involves abdominal contractions to trigger the collapse.
“Sometimes the collapses propagate along the tracheal pathways in a contraction wave, and sometimes the collapses happen at different locations along the same tracheal pathway”, she further explains.
Insects and other terrestrial arthropods, benefiting from millions of years of evolutionary refinement, manipulate fluids efficiently. The fluids include their bodily fluids, air, nectar, and water, at the micro-scale in their daily lives. Microfluidic technology, although far behind insect fluid handling in terms of performance, is still a fast developing field. It allows traditional laboratory testing spaces, occupying hundreds of square meters, to be shrunk down to chips, occupying less than a square centimeter.
Such types of lab-on-a-chip microfluidic devices are set to bring revolutionary advancements in this field, for instance, exoplanetary composition testing and single cell biology studies. This technology can provide inexpensive, ubiquitous environmental monitoring and global health testing. Microfluidic technology has the potential to bridge the gap between Ant-Man’s human respiratory apparatuses, and the more optimal ones that insects use to breathe at the micro-scale. This would help them shrink in their suits with ease.
Finally, including a molecular filter (like an H-filter, which would allow continuous extraction of certain molecular analytes while preventing others) could additionally help the superheroes address the elevated oxygen calls. Such a filter would take away smaller non-oxygen molecules from the air, growing the relative oxygen content in them.
Combine these three with Pym particles — stated to permit for a discount or growth in the distance between atoms and matter, in addition to manipulating mass — and you’ve got a viable resolution to the respiration difficulty. Hence we can see that technological advancements and discoveries can guarantee the longevity of our marvel-lous superheroes.
So now when Scott says, “Absolutely! My days of breaking into places and stealing stuff are over. What do you need me to do?” Hank could reply, “Miss Staples gave you the gift of life for you to break into places and steal some stuff.”
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