#grouchy aunt j's superhero science corner

[swashbucklery]

Okay look I'm trying to be chill about the space whales I am not chill about the space whales but if you would like to read about my many space whale grievances feel free they are various and numerous. If not, don't click on the readmore!

Because like. Fine. You have megafauna. Fine.

Okay let's say you have megafauna. They're big! It's cool! Let me tell you a secret: the reason megafauna work in water is because water is buoyant. This helps with your gravity-mass problem, because if you have gravity then it is hard to be big and not be weighed down.

If you are in the sky you have this problem even worse! You need less mass even than in the ocean, because your ocean is now uh made of air so you should in fact be lighter which means being a megafauna is like - scientifically problematic but like whatever. whatever!!!

i'll even handwave the gas exchange FINE like yes gas exchange relies on atmospheric pressure gradients and the larger you are the more critical this is but I'm being generous so sure this is a lighter than air megafauna that breathes something, somehow (or doesn't) and eats. . .sky. . .plankton? FUCK IT. SURE. WHATEVER.

And it can survive in the vacuum of space sure so its body tissues must be designed to function optimally in a zero-pressure environment sure fuck it yeah. And actually that explains the megafauna piece because you don't have to worry about gravity, maybe they eat Space Plankton now idgaf.

BUT THEN BUT THEN they are in the atmosphere of a planet and we know this because Ahsoka isn't wearing a goddamn space suit when she ~communes with the whales~ therefore our vacuum megafauna can also survive with a) gravity and b) atmosphere. SURE. OKAY!! FINE!!

How do they do this I don't know maybe they're capable of somehow altering their body chemistry such that they can function in both pressurized and depressurized environments. Maybe somehow they have a swim bladder made of. . .idk helium? Maybe they're giant whale zeppelins, sure, fine, sure.

Oh they have tentacles of course

Oh they have glowing butt lights of course

Oh of course their rear parts are hyperdrive engines. THE WHALE SQUID TENTACLES ARE HIDING A HYPERDRIVE THEY HAVE AN ORGAN MEANT TO SIMULATE FASTER THAN LIGHT TRAVEL AND IT'S IN THEIR BUTT

WHERE ARE THEIR ANUSES DAVE FILONI ARE THEY INSIDE THE HYPERDRIVE DID YOU EVEN THINK ABOUT THAT?? WHAT DO THEY DO WITH ALL OF THE SPACE PLANKTON THEY HAVE EATEN

DON'T @ ME BEING LIKE OH THEY EAT BIRDS THEY HAVE BALEEN THEY ARE FILTER FEEDERS

How do the delicate bodies made for both gravity and not gravity and also the atmosphere and also the vacuum of space then survive the sheer force dynamics of hyperspace WHATEVER. WHO GIVES A SHIT. SPACE WHALES ARE COOL!!!

AHHHHHH!!!!

I need to lie down. i need to lie down. Send me to the seaside for my health oh my god.

[swashbucklery]

Look this is not my first rodeo, I know better than to have an opinion about Star Wars on the public internet, but I'm going to need one of you nerds to link me to the official Lucasfilm brief explaining exactly how lightsabers work and why they work in the vacuum of space.

[swashbucklery]

I googled it and didn’t get answers so I thought I’d ask you, certified adult™️: how come you can’t put metal pots into the fridge because it’ll make food go bad when you can leave stuff in slow cookers all day? Is it a heat thing?

OK anon first of all: let me google that for you

Secondly: Food safety means that food for human consumption has to be kept either below 4C or above 40C; the temperatures in between are the temperatures at which bacteria can grow. You don't want bacteria in your food because it makes the food go off OR makes the food full of illness-causing bacteria. I will not be giving you these degrees in farenheit this is a celsius-only adulting service. The slow-cooker on the "warm" setting keeps food at a minimum of 60C, and 60 is bigger than 40, which is why it can stay on all day.

You can put a room-temperature metal pot into your fridge with wild abandon. A non-stainless steel one might make your food taste weird if it sits. HOWEVER, you shouldn't put a warm metal pot into your fridge. The food inside the pot might not go bad but you run the risk of making the rest of the food in your fridge go off.

The fridge is designed to keep food between about 1.7C and 4C, but above 0C (because: freezing), and designed to cool food from room temp to 4C or (ideally, in the case of food that you buy refrigerated) to keep food at 4C or cooler . If you put something super warm in there (say, a 40C metal pot), the heat dissipates throughout the fridge and will warm the food surrounding to above 4C. Metal is going to do this better, because it has a low heat capacity , meaning it both absorbs and gives away heat faster - so you're going to get a bigger short-term jump in the temperature of the foods around that metal pot. The fridge is going to then have to work harder to re-cool everything to below 4C (where, you'll recall, bacteria can no longer grow), because it has to overcome the heat from the warm food PLUS the heat from the warm pot. During that time where surrounding foods are warmer, you can have active bacterial replication thus leading to spoiled food.

If you do need to chill food, putting it into a room-temperature container (so, a tupperware/a room temperature bowl/whatever) and THEN putting it in the fridge is going to minimize the amount of heat energy you're bringing to the inside of your fridge environment, and help the food cool to 4C faster. For more information, google "food safety and handling" + your local area - your public health department will have a detailed guide.

[swashbucklery]

Supergirl, the Television Show: We need Kara’s DNA!

Me: Ah yes, a scene where the characters go to her apartment! Get her hairbrush! Take samples off of her old clothes using good old fashioned science!

Supergirl, The Television Show: I think you mean TIME TRAVEL.

[swashbucklery]

Also since apparently my new niche is Superhero Reproductive Biology I’ve finally seen Black Widow and like. I don’t care bc it was actually a really gorgeous movie but ALSO if you remove ovaries and uterus from a young person they need to be on some sort of estrogen replacement until the age when they’d normally go into menopause. The consequence is that if you don’t they’ll get early-onset osteoporosis which makes it very hard to successfully jump a motorcycle off a building and this is actually such a nothing grievance like I can’t stress enough how much I love this movie anyway? But if you’re planning to write fic later, now you know.

[swashbucklery]

OK look I know the answer is “time magic” but if the Waverider has a shared closed loop ventilation system how does Behrad get away with smoking weed like once you sit and think about it there are so many holes

[swashbucklery]

Okay so I am slowly working through Batwoman S3/making my wife fast forward through the scary parts and like.

Look.

If you have an infectious pathogen that causes MURDER CROCODILE DISEASE, the problem that you have is not “one person in the sewers is eating people.”

The problem that you have is effectively infinite crocodiles, because by their own internal logic the pathogen is a) infectious and b) present in its saliva, which means that every person who was bitten and did not die as well as every person that handled those secretions should also have murder crocodile disease.

[swashbucklery]

Look I just - this isn’t anything about anything, I still love this show, this is not a criticism post per se. But I just need to like. Publicly and in great detail, go over the specific biology-related reasons why I am annoyed by the in-universe scientific specifics of Mick’s alien brain mpreg. Consider this to be That’s Not How Looms Work 2.0: That’s Not How Brains Work.

Content warning for like, IDK if it’s gross medical stuff but I’m going to go into detail about why alien species implanting their nests into brains doesn’t make biological sense and you might find that gross I don’t know your life. If you do, I’ve included a helpful cut which I know doesn’t work on mobile but like. Whatever dudes, I tried.

OK so this started as a post about how, re: Mick and Lita’s arc in 6.10, it’s actually significantly debatable as to whether the alien brood would be affected by Mick’s alcohol use. And then it kind of . . .escalated.

(For the sake of brevity I’m going to use the word “embryos” to describe them, because that covers both placental and non-placental forms of growth.)

So. Leaving aside the complexities of the species’ reproductive strategy, which is another thing that’s really getting me and actually nevermind we’re not leaving it aside like. Look. LOOK if you are intelligent life capable of building spaceships and complex thought, by and large you’re also investing in your young and devoting a significant amount of time to parenting and brain development. This, in nature on earth, is typically correlated with fewer young that are invested in more heavily.

The alien brood having 47 embryos and no parenting sort of implies that this species follows a different strategy, and looks more like the many-babies-many-die sort of approach which is - interesting. Because the young are clearly expected to grow into complex and highly intelligent adults which means a need for like. Learning and skill-development

(Although Mick getting broody over Kayla kind of implies that there’s some sort of biological bonding at play and a real reproductive strategy could be to have hosts raise their young except. . .not if they die? And leaving aside the brain biology below, if the young eat humans it wouldn’t be implausible that the host is intended to be a first meal for the young.)

So anyway. If we’re really here, if this is the dystopia we live in where we’re discussing whether Mick’s brain embryos would be affected by his alcohol use like: maybe?

Things you would need are:

for the embryos to be alcohol-sensitive; alcohol is broadly pretty toxic so that’s plausible for sure but what are the specific effects in this species and are they negative is like. A whole other thing.

for the embryos to be extracting nutrients

And this is where it really gets complex because like. If they’re eggs, they specifically are self-feeding. In that scenario, Mick is essentially an incubator and there is no nutrient transfer between embryo and gestational host. An argument against this is that he’s having - symptoms, I guess you can call it? Which heavily implies that the embryos are triggering some sort of neurochemical response in him, which would require a of signalling process between the eggs and the host biology.

(That said you COULD be getting that from whatever nest/egg sac transfer process occurred, ie they are still eggs but the nest itself is creating chemical signals without direct nutrient transfer.)

The other option is that there is some sort of placental interface, ie the embryos are directly obtaining nutrition from Mick’s blood. In that case, they would be affected by any ingested alcohol. HOWEVER the mechanics of that are - the best word I can think of is suspicious, and let me get into why.

OKAY. So.

Here is the thing about brains (this is the potentially-gross medical part):

they’re very useful and you do very much need them; like I know Tumblr meme culture has stretched this language to within an inch of its life but your brain makes your body operate and without it you die.

the brain lives in a handy little case that is fixed in capacity! This is the skull. The skull is not stretchy because it’s made of bones. (The exception here is if you’re a baby and your skull hasn’t fused yet, but Mick is not and his skull definitely is so: not relevant.) 

Brain tissue is very soft and squishy. The skull also keeps lots of other squishy things nice and safe, like all the blood vessels that go to the brain, and also the top part of the spinal cord.

So. We have a very soft object in a very hard carrying case. If you add extra things to the case, within reason everything will kind of smush around. BUT if you add too many extra things to case, the soft object (the brain) will get squashed.

Spoiler alert: if the brain gets too squashed it stops working good. This can cause lots of problems ranging from seizures to like. Significant body functions just not happening. The range of what happens depends on how squashed and where and what is doing the squashing.

Remember that fixed carrying case? Well, it has a hole in it! Unfortunately that hole is in the very bottom; it’s the outflow opening for the spine and it’s a fixed size as well. If things inside the skull get too squashy, this will push the brainstem down against this opening and the brainstem is very very important. If the brainstem gets squashed the brain just like. It literally turns off the functions that tell the lungs to breathe and the heart to beat, which causes death.

If the embryos are placental in nature, that means creating an organ that can interface with the brain blood supply to cause nutrient transfer. Given the space considerations above, the extra space needed for a placental organ to nourish forty-seven embryos would be quite significant and probably also fatal to the host.

As well, the brain is more sensitive to changes in blood flow and nutrient supply than other parts of the body - while a nutrient transfer organ in this area would guarantee an oxygen-and nutrient-rich environment, the sensitivity of the brain means that the host would “feel” the effects of this quite quickly. Not enough oxygen or sugar in the brain also makes it stop working which: see above re: brain needed for living. At best, the host would be fainting constantly which is...not ideal.

So anyway if you put FORTY SEVEN ALIEN TENTACLE EMBRYOS INTO A BRAIN THAT’S INSIDE A SKULL IT CAUSES DEATH. 

Like.

Do not pass go do not collect $200 DEATH.

And so. Leaving aside that I am being asked in the year of our lord 2021 to suspend this much disbelief in these trying times. From a reproductive capacity it really doesn’t make a lot of biological sense. If these are embryos that require nutrition and it’s a surprise how many will be successfully transferred, implanting them in a body area where if you have one embryo a liiiiittle too big it kills the host is an incredibly risky reproductive strategy!! If your embryos can’t survive outside a live host, killing it prematurely means that potentially the entire brood dies. If the host is supposed to be a snack for the brood but it dies before they are mature enough to eat it, the entire brood also dies!

(It also double doesn’t work if the reproductive strategy is to have the host somehow raise or parent the young because: death.)

(Also don’t get me started on the egg sac on the back of what is his upper chest at best THAT’S NOT HIS BRAIN DC’S LEGENDS OF TOMORROW I’LL FIGHT YOU.)

Like, narratively I see why they didn’t want to have embryos in Mick’s abdomen because it approaches literal mpreg in an uncomfortable way and lbr this is already uncomfortable. But also. If someone had asked me - which clearly nobody did - the most biologically plausible strategy would I think be to implant embryos orally. If they migrate through the gut wall they can form an egg sac near the big vein that goes from the gut to the liver (the portal vein). This is extremely protected, temperature-regulated, and allows for maximum nutrition, but the abdomen is infinitely more flexible and can provide space for growing young much more easily.

(Note: this is not how human babies work, I cannot stress this enough. But also I’m not explaining that in this post, if you’re a character on Bridgerton you shouldn’t be reading Tumblr.)

(It is how lots of gross parasites work though, if you need a terrifying wikipedia rabbit hole to fall down.)

ANYWAY tl;dr THAT’S NOT HOW BRAINS WORK. I feel better, thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[swashbucklery]

Okay look aside from the fact that I will be screaming random BSG references from now until the end of time and you’re all going to have to put up with me, now that I’ve slept on this ep I am also having so many feelings.

Okay.

Because my first degree is in neuroscience and I am the first to admit all of my knowledge is dated bc it’s been ninety years since undergrad but this was like, THE debate we would have as goofy undergrads this is actually a huge scientific sticking point. And if you’re going to do it with robots I find it a lot easier to suspend my disbelief because like, yes sure it’s Tricia Helfer and if she gets stabbed she bleeds but also for some reason her spine glows because she’s got robot parts somewhere (?) so sure! Fuck it! It’s SPACE MAGIC.

But this show is alleging that - wait. Let me back up.

Because the debate is: what is consciousness made of. Is human intelligence the product of synapses firing in concert; if so then the logic follows that if you stack enough synapses together, an organism becomes self-aware. (How many synapses and to what degree of complexity is a whole other debate like; do pigeons have consciousness and intelligence and how do you measure it is a real study someone has done.)

If consciousness is greater than the product of synaptic function, is there some third element that contributes to consciousness and if so how do you account for it scientifically. If identity is the product of experience how are those experiences coded such that a pre-coded brain truly has the same layers of memory and experience. It’s not the same as just programming a hard drive; there’s epigenetics and complex layers of like. Oxidative stress and nutrition and the more you look at it the more intricate the system truly is. How do you know if two identical brains will add up to identical people but more importantly how do you make two identical brains?? It’s not just “wiring,” like you really have to do a deep dive all the way down and the scientific perfection and precision required for that is almost unfathomable.

And so then like. If Sara dies and then is cloned “perfectly,” is it still Sara and who decides if she’s still Sara and how does she know she’s still Sara?

(There is also, conceptually, the idea of Sara and Bishop as clones that somehow have individual identities vs the Ava’s of which there are many “copies” and the idea of like. What makes a clone a person and where is that line and they’re clearly driving towards the idea that all Ava’s are people but it’s clear that Bishop has a “scientific” “reason” for treating them the way that he does so. . .what is it.)

(But then also ALSO on top of that this is happening in a universe where magic and souls exist!!! Canonically and physically!!!! And how do you account for these concepts both existing simultaneously, because if there is a quantifiable soul then a fully programmed brain isn’t sufficient for identity or consciousness!)

((Unless we are alleging that there IS a soul and that this is the reason only one clone of Bishop can exist at once; that the soul travels between bodies and so when one body dies the soul migrates to his new one.))

((But then he needs some kind of continuous live uplinking system because if he himself has been murdered, and his aim is to be reborn with all of his memories including memories of his own death he has to be constantly storing that information somewhere which leads us to cylon base ships and look we’ve done it again, we’re back.))

((But then how are we accounting for the Ava clones; HOW MANY AVA SOUL TOKENS ARE THERE IN HELL or are we saying that they as a collective share a soul? But then how do you quantify units of soul or is it infinitely regenerative, in which case the distinction between a “single” soul vs one soul split infinitely is semantically meaningless?))

Anyway I started this post because I was going to go on a winding tangent about Sara and the idea of embodiment and identity and consent but I started thinking about the clone rules too hard and now here we are.

[swashbucklery]

Also I’m sitting here quietly weeping at the fact that the Legends writers got more right about fungus than they did about the human skull.

[swashbucklery]

So @isaidquirky was trying to goad me into picking apart the superhero science of the Black Widow movie and I do have one (1) note that I’ll slide into another post but actually: it was great. 

And like.

It’s not accurate, in the sense of like, this is a technology that exists in this world and they have done a great job of really extrapolating the cutting edge of modern neuroscience into film. But it follows the rules of like. Internally consistent, narratively meaningful, narratively consistent. The chemical widow program is scientifically nonsense at best, but this is also a world in which Kilgrave exists, and where the Winter Soldier program exists. The premise of Soviet Russia perfected secret mind control science is internally consistent, and the backstory of the Widow program that we’re given is careful to dovetail with the mythology we’ve seen in Civil War/Winter Soldier/FatWS, so I’ll buy it.

Is it possible to punch yourself in the face so hard that your olfactory nerve is severed? Probably not, but honestly that moment had such a delicious emotional beat that I cannot bring myself to really fact-check it. Also if you plug your nose really really really well you can effectively block all inputs to the olfactory system without having to sever the nerve; I’m going to assume that Natasha just needed to have a really swollen/bloody nose to totally knock out her sense of smell and was doing a cool dramatic spy metaphor at the same time.

(It is possible to sever the olfactory nerve while a person is still alive, because of a quirk of the neuroanatomy. But it usually happens because of severe trauma or problems on the brain end, not on the nose end.)

[swashbucklery]

I'm looking forward to your Legends science thoughts! (if you would like to share, that is)

Omg anon I have SO MANY like. You are going to regret not focusing me more let's GET GOING.

1) we will never speak of the nose babies. Never. They have defied every possible law of biology INCLUDING the conceptual analogies to human birth. (WHAT IS CONTRACTING? IN HIS HEAD? THERE IS NO MUSCLES???) Also the ear is not a direct path to the brain there is so much bone there SO MUCH if you're leaking fluid between your ear and your brain it means something has gone horribly wrong with your skull I need to lie down.

2) Okay look nobody asked but I am utterly riveted by the Bishop clone mythology they are putting together and I want to discuss it for 84 years.

Like.

First of all they are rapidly barrelling towards a complex debate that falls at the intersection of neuroscience and philosophy, namely: what are souls made of. And I discussed this a while ago so I won't get too deep into it but also I'm going to get so deep into it you can't stop me.

So.I think a lot of what is getting me is that this show seems to be conflating DNA with the complex blend of experiential signals and embedded memories that are the human brain and - idk "consciousness," I think is the word the show used.

Because DNA is - ok if we're using the computer metaphor, DNA would control the hardware. So things like architecture, any genetic factors in variable neurotransmitter expression, stuff like that. And conceptually "consciousness" is so difficult because it is hotly debated whether or how it's even measurable, let alone what it’s made of. Like as humans experience the world, they form memories and that is coded - somehow, in a complex soup of neurochemical signals and little tweaks at the synapse level that make people who they are. Experiences and traumas and physiologic stress and illnesses like they all do things that shape brain function and in some ways structure on a very tiny scale and it's so hard and weird and cool and complicated but it's very very much not DNA. And then the question is: is that consciousness. Is that sufficient for consciousness or is there an ineffable other element that we can’t yet measure that also accounts for it.

You know this! You do!! Many folks know or have met a set of identical twins and they're genetically identical with often very different personalities and temperaments because consciousness and genes are really two separate things. They can influence each other, but they are also really shaped by the complex interactions of a person's temperament and the environment they experience.

(This isn't even getting into the emerging research on epigenetics and the way that some of those changes appear to be passed down in utero and then how those might be translated once you shift from gestation and birth to 3D MEAT PRINTER.)

Anyway this is a very long way of saying IF YOU TAKE 6% OF SOMEONE'S DNA YOU DON'T SOMEHOW STEAL 6% OF THEIR KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCES? Like look the stupid captain code word Gideon override is always so fucking cool I'm a huge sucker for it but if it's supposed to be a voice recognition override that like. Doesn't???? Work??? And like, I think what Bishop was trying to say was that he patched the code for his consciousness file with 6% of Sara's memories which is - acceptable, if I must accept the premise that the complexity of human brain function is somehow downloadable.

Like I loved the scenes between Bishop and Ava and it has poked the part of my fandom feelings that simply must know more but also I really really want this show to take a firm position on its 3D meat printer clone worldbuilding so that I can really follow along.

[swashbucklery]

omg this is already so much. Doctor Redhead at the Museum Institute For Science is mad because the funding to her LIGHTNING LASER PROJECT got cut for BEING DANGEROUS like. SORRY TO DISAPPOINT BUT THAT SOUNDS PRETTY LEGIT.

[swashbucklery]

I just. I J U S T. @zaritarazi​

Like yes YES they’ve established that Gideon can 3D print an arm with her magic future tech and YES the AVA project is several decades in the future 2166 fine. FINE.

But also if we’re accepting the premise that we can 3D print people this kind of renders DNA splicing moot. Why muck around with genetics why not just 3D print taller Rachel with laser eyes and wings it’s whatever!! EVERYTHING WE KNOW ABOUT BIOLOGY IS WHATEVER!

[swashbucklery]

But also.

A L S O.

Are we ALLEGING are we INSINUATING that in the future we can just 3D PRINT A PERSON WITH LASERS. ARE WE REALLY. ARE WE INSINUATING A FULLY GRAPHIC UI FOR SEAMLESS DNA SEQUENCING. ARE WE ALLEGING THAT WE CAN SPLICE ALIEN DNA AND HUMAN DNA TOGETHER TO GIVE PEOPLE SICK WOLVERINE POWERS WITHOUT ALSO CAUSING CATASTROPHIC CONSEQUENCES FOR THE HOST BODY.

[swashbucklery]

They used a funnel to pour goo in Mick's EAR

Look LOOK I said I wasn't going to discuss this AND I'M NOT but also

THIS IS FROM THE INTERNET ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA. ABOVE YOU WILL SEE THE BONE PART OF THE EAR.

THE FOLLOWING DIAGRAM IS FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA FOR KIDS.

IF you pour a blender full of smoothie into someone's ear (note: do not do that please do not do that) at best you will fit a thimbleful of smoothie into their ear AT WORST you will do very bad things to their ears (do not pour smoothies into people's ears oH MY god). BUT PLEASE NOTE at no point in this diagram FOR CHILDREN is there any connection between the ear canal and the inside of the skull.