Movie Science: Does Ant Man and the Wasp's Shrinking Tech Actually Work?

No. No it does not.

Oh, you want a few more details into why the shrinking technology from Ant-Man and the Wasp doesn't work? Well that's doable. I've got to warn you, though- it might be the single worst science in the Marvel Cinematic Universe- a franchise not particularly noted for its scientific accuracy.

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The first, and biggest problem (or smallest, as it may be) is the sheer improbability of shrinking technology. How, exactly, do you make it work? Do you remove molecules from the body to make it smaller? That, among other things, would be highly, highly destructive- as in, there's really no way to do it without killing someone messily. How about shrinking the size of the molecules themselves? Even if we were to assume that were possible (which it doesn't appear to be right now), molecules don't actually take up the majority of the space in the human body. Remember that old adage about solid objects being mostly empty space?

So what about reducing the distance between those molecules? Reducing that empty space? Well, that comes with issues all of its own. The molecules have space between them because of electrons repelling electrons. In order to reduce the amount of space you'd have to reduce the repulsion between electrons- and technology able to adjust the basic universal constants like that is astonishingly beyond us. Those are godlike powers. Assuming you did, however, this would result in problems all of its own, because the positive charge from your protons would abruptly be much more powerful, so in order to prevent your body from (again) tearing itself apart, you'd need to adjust the charge of the protons as well. There's also no guarantee that, you know, instead of shrinking, you'd just fall apart. You could also just squeeze hard enough to overwhelm the repulsion of the electrons, but that comes with its own, hopefully rather obvious, issues. (Squish.) And even if that weren't a concern, the instant the pressure was relieved, well... extremely rapid expansion would occur. Our best bet would be to somehow alter the Bohr Radius, but even that seems... rather iffy, and still no idea how we'd actually do that.

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So let's assume that, somehow, we came up with a method of shrinking people that evaded all of these issues, and somehow managed to shrink the Bohr Radius. Your problems don't end there. First off, interaction with the particles around you would be very, very problematic- because they'd all be their normal size/ repulsiveness/ whatever instead of being altered by the method you used to change your size. You normally have constant chemical reactions going on with the world around you- who knows how terrifyingly strange those would be with your altered state. The oxygen atoms you're trying to breathe aren't shrunk with you, so how can they fuel your much smaller cells? (If they're even capable of the correct chemical interactions with them, that is.)

Next, Ant-Man and Wasp aren't going to be able to see or hear worth a damn. Light has very specific wavelengths, and our eyes are adapted to capturing light at those wavelengths. Human pupils shrunk down to ant size would quite simply be too small to let very much light in. They're just completely maladapted to being that size. A similar phenomena happens with sound- soundwaves have particular sizes, and reducing the size of the cilia in your ears that detect them would vastly reduce your ability to do so. (As an amusing side note, your voice would be incredibly, absurdly high-pitched.)

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Next come a wide array of anatomical problems. Notably, your body is specifically evolved to function at a specific size- that is, it operates with a specific surface area to volume ratio. The bigger your volume is, the more tricky ways your body needs in order to increase your surface area for various organs. The lungs are one of the best examples of this- our lungs are all wrinkled and brachiated to the point where we have something on the order of a hundred yards of lung surface. So the giant ants in Ant-Man and the Wasp would suffocate quickly, not having the adaptations necessary to get enough air at that size. On the flip side, having that much surface area in your lungs at that small a size risks hyperoxygenation at every breath. Similar concerns apply to digestion and other bodily systems. (Assuming that the atom size differential we discussed above doesn't make all of these concerns entirely superfluous. The fact that the helmet is enclosed with a mouthpiece might actually be used to handwave away the atom size differential problem- maybe.) One especially troubling problem is in heat dissipation- with less total skin surface area to dissipate heat, we'd overheat quickly at small size, if we still generate the same amount of body heat.

Density is another huge problem. A full grown man shrunk down to the size of an ant, if they retained their original mass, would be about as dense as a white dwarf star- dense enough to sink through the surface of the earth like a bowling ball through tissue paper. Of course, they'd also be so dense that their body wouldn't really probably be able to hold together, and do what any extremely high pressure system does when put into a low pressure system, and even out the pressure differential. (Rather explosively.) This is one of the biggest inconsistencies from the movie, however- they can't make up their mind about whether you retain your mass or not. Buildings and cars when shrunk down don't seem to retain their mass, people do- but only sometimes. They're really just adapting it for narrative utility and comic relief from moment to moment.

Alright, I'll quit it with the tiny images. [Image source]

So, all that being said... you should still absolutely go see Ant-Man and the Wasp. It's far and away one of the funniest MCU films thus far, and provides far more emotional investment in the characters than many of the other movies. Its small scale (pun intended) from its focus more on family sized, rather than world ending, threats is a refreshing change of pace from the rest of the MCU. The radical inconsistencies in the treatment of the shrinking technology are only problematic from a scientific basis- on a narrative basis, they're used brilliantly and consistently, and are the foundation of some of the film's most entertaining visual moments. The cast puts in some really wonderful work- even some of the bit players. It's also the first MCU film that, well, really lacks a big bad. Only some of the minor villains could really be considered actually bad guys- it's really a rescue/heist movie. It's easily one of my favorite Marvel films, and I can't recommend it enough.

Just not for the science.

More Movie Science posts:

• The Geology of the Last Jedi's Crait
• Would Thanos' Plan in Infinity War Really Work?
• Star Wars' Kessel Run and the Akkadese Maelstrom

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Bibliography:

• https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-real-physics-of-ant-man-blind-deaf-and-his-voice-would-be-hilarious/
• http://irl.cs.ucla.edu/papers/right-size.html (This is the oldest article I've yet cited on Steemit- it's from 1928!)
• https://nerdist.com/the-science-of-small-how-does-the-ant-man-suit-work/
• https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/06/movies/antman-and-the-wasp-science.html
• https://www.wired.com/story/the-shrinking-building-in-ant-man-and-the-wasp-would-cause-massive-problems/
• http://www.physics-astronomy.com/2017/06/if-atoms-are-mostly-empty-space-why-do.html#.W0Q_argnaUk
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohr_radius
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant-Man_and_the_Wasp
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrink_ray