Hey You What If?

On the face of it, humans are a bit breakable. We have these hard skeletons that can crack if you have a tumble. But if we were indestructible, like a superhero, then we'd never have to worry about ending up in plaster! So what's the best way? First we try removing the problem - it's our bones that break, so let's get rid of them altogether. Unfortunately, this doesn't work very well. Without our bones we'd basically be blobs and unable to move anywhere. Okay, metal is tough right? How about taking inspiration from knights in armour, and making our skin solid metal? The problem with metal is that if you hit it hard enough it will actually bend. So, your metal skin would soon be covered with dents and you'd end up completely bent out of shape. What we need is something that can take the knocks without changing shape permanently. What we need is something like rubber, something 'elastic.' Elastic materials deform when you hit or stretch them but then they spring back to their original shape. In fact, there are new man-made elastic materials that can stretch up to a 100 times longer! If we were made of elastic, we'd be very hard to break but there would be a down-side. We'd be very, very bouncy and if we weren't careful we'd end up crashing around the house like an oversized rubber ball and breaking everything around us. Of course, we could always make our house elastic too?

If the beach is too far to go but you still want to spend some time surfing waves, then why not surf on land instead? Well, there are some very good reasons people don't surf on land. To surf, you need waves which are steep enough that you can literally slide down them - that's how surfing works. You slide down the face whilst the wave continuously picks you up so you can just keep sliding. Finding waves the right shape on land is quite a challenge. There are naturally occurring waves on land, but they are created as a result of dramatic seismic events like an earthquake or a volcanic eruption. And even if you were standing by a volcano when it went off, the waves it produces aren't very steep and they're not very tall. So you really couldn't surf them. Which leaves you with two alternatives: A. Melt the ground so it becomes a liquid. But then the ground would be over 600 degrees centigrade and destroy your surf board. Or B. Fluidise the ground. Fluidising involves blowing air through the soil particles so that they can move freely, which causes the ground to behave more like water. But you still need that volcano - a big lava bomb is just the ticket for setting off a big wave in the fluidised ground! Dangerous sport, land surfing...

We try out a crazy idea from science fiction to build a giant sphere around the sun and give us more energy than we'll ever need.

We take inspiration from the natural world as we imagine a new kind of superhero that can walk up walls.