We can be heroes, pt. 1I wrote a post on how technology is turning us all into supermen/women. It was huge, big enough to split into three. Enjoy the first part, how science promises to turn us into Magneto.
Magneto's claim to fame is his ability to create and control magnetic fields. These fields can be used to move metallic objects or to interact with the Earth's own magnetic field to achieve levitation. Just as like ends of two magnets repel each other, Magneto is repelled from the Earth. I must be the only person I know who thinks that Magneto is a great role model. He uses his powers not for personal gain, but solely for fleshing out is (admittedly immoral) philosophy of protecting his own kind.
In the real world, there's only so much that you can do with magnets. They're small and black and they hold your bills to the fridge. Luckily, there is a much more useful way to bend magnetism to our will, and it uses a force that humanity is much better at manipulating.
Electricity and magnetism go hand in hand like George Michael and a public toilet, so much so that physicists consider them to be one and the same force: electromagnetism. Electric current runs through a conductive material, polarising the atoms that it's made up of. This gives the object a "north" and "south" end, effectively making the material a magnet. Better than a magnet, a magnet that can be turned on and off. Conductive materials are useful, but their full electricity-carrying potential is never realised due to the friction that the electric current causes within the material. Friction retards any force that it is applied to, kinetic, electric or otherwise, and turns it into heat. Too much juice and the wire/circuit/Texan convict melts.
Enter superconductivity. At extremely low temperatures, colder than some regions of space, some conductive materials suffer no friction at all when electric current passes through them. This means that the size of the magnetic field is limited only by how much electricity can be supplied and how many atoms the material has available to transfer that electricity. This is nothing new, superconductive materials have been studied for decades and are even used in industry. Those bullet trains in China and Europe glide along a magnetic field generated by a superconductive material.
What is new is all the cool new superconductive materials that are being discovered. In the last twenty years, superconductive materials have been developed that have steadily risen in operating temperature. Scientists are now predicting room temperature superconductivity within years, the theory is there.
How does all this bullshit make you Magneto? Imagine wearing a suit, throbbing with electricity and yet isn't hot enough to turn you into a puddle. The magnetic field created by all that juice could be manipulated to allow you to move freely in the open air, or more precisely, through the Earth's magnetic field. Sure, you'd dish out instant death to anyone who touched you, but god damn, you'd be floating! Don't ask me where all that electricity would come from...
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Wow, man. That's like, you know, so cool. I want to be, how you say, MagneticoMan one day.
I swear at least one or two paragraphs there are ripped straight from wikipedia or something.
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