Could Ant-Man defeat Thanos by... Uh, flying into his butt? Dread it. Run from it. The memes still arrive all the same. And now, they are here. Or should I say, "Science is here." The Avengers have proventhey are willing to do whatever it takes to save the universe. So, could Ant-Man defeatThanos by flying into his butt? Yeah, we're doin' it. (exhales) You did this to me. Alright, so it's time toask the cheeky questions.
There's been a meme goingaround for months now that the easiest way to defeatThanos in Avengers: Endgame is for Ant-Man to flyup into Thanos' butt, expand to Giant-Mansize, and then I guess, explode him from the inside out. The idea is gaining so much traction that people are actuallyasking Paul Rudd about it, and surely he has morepromotional things to do. So in the grand tradition of this program, let's take this ridiculoussituation absolutely seriously and try to figure outwhat would really happen in a battle between ScottLang and intes-Titan. (laughs)C'mon, that was pretty good. First, obviously, havingsomeone or something enter your body and thenexpand to human size or greater and explode you would be an absolutely horrible way to die. But Thanos does not have to explode for this Ant-Man move to kill him.
If Ant-Man really entered Thanos' colon, I told you we were gonna takethis absolutely seriously, then all he would have to do is perforate the bowel tissue, or tear through it. Bowel perforation is anextremely serious injury, and that's because manydifferent species of bacteria live inside your guts alongside of you, doing beneficial, sometimes harmful, and sometimes neutral things. But if they get out into yoursurrounding body tissues, they can cause deadly infections. The mortality rate fromthis kind of injury is somewhere between, according to the literature, 11 and 81%. So, if Ant-Man justperforated the colon tissue, that might be enough to defeat Thanos. Our next question is, then, can Ant-Man get into angry Grimace's butt?
Th-anus, and we have theultimate tensile strength of human colon material,which we can compare to Titan colon material. Now though, we butt upagainst our biggest problem. How much pressure does Ant-Man push on the surrounding materialwith when he enlarges? Is it so much that he forcesmaterial out of the way, or is it not enough so he just conforms to the surrounding material? This is very important. We have to solve this, butts depend on it! This is where we have to start making some serious ass-umptionsbecause the movies aren't very clear on exactlyhow Scott Lang's powers work.
Does Ant-Man actually pushon stuff when he enlarges? That makes or breaks this meme, and the movies aren't very clear on this. For example, sometimesAnt-Man is enlarging through the dirt, forcingthat dirt out of the way, which is obviously some amount of force. Other times though, hegets caught expanding inside of a room, like the room itself is keeping him from expanding further, like our Thanos colon might. Other times, whole buildings are expanding with Pym particles,obviously pushing stuff out of the way with some force, but then other times Ant-Man is expanding into a punch like he's providing no force of his own at all. Paul Rudd doesn't even knowhow to approach this question, and he's Ant-Man.
I don't know!I don't know. - I surveyed every singleshrinking or enlarging of Ant-Man or The Wasp inthe entirety of the MCU and found that, more oftenthan not, it is implied that enlarging providessome kind of force. Okay, but how much force? I think the best exampleand most straightforward one might be this, when The Wasp uses her car and Pym particles to launch an SUV. In that scene, the SUVlooks like it's launched at around a 45-degree angle and spends a full two seconds flying through the air. Now in that scene, the car specifically is a 2000 GMC Yukon XL. Yes, we must get this specific.
If we assume that this car gets a rough parabolic trajectoryduring this launch, which I think is a reasonable assumption, then we can use the equationsfor parabolic trajectories to solve for the initial velocity needed to give this car this kind of motion. Then, we can plug thatinitial velocity value into the work-energy equation to see just how much forceapplied over what distance it will take to move thecar from zero velocity in the direction of launchto the initial velocity we just calculated for the parabol-- just a second.
Do all of this and we get a force imparted to the SUV from The Wasp'scar of a little over 100,000 newtons, almost done, butt math! The Wasp's car in this scene, I checked, is a 2010 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, the dimensions of whichyou are seeing right now. I think it is a reasonableassumption to think that this force is being applied over every square inchof the roof of the car, because that is whatis pushing on the SUV, and if you do that, divide the force value by the dimensions of this 2010Mercedes-Benz Sprinter roof, then you get a pressure valueof 2.5 pounds per square inch that Pym particles areallowing that Sprinter to push on the SUV with. Because Ant-Man is using the same Pym particle pushing power, I think that this, thisis our pressure value. Whew, okay so now we haveeverything we should need to take this meme way too seriously. So, Ant-Man shrinks. He moves past fabric, past skin cells, and into Thanos' colon. He then enlarges with Pym particles with 2.5 pounds of forceacting across every square inch of his body, and thereforeagainst the colon walls. Using even more butt studies to get a range of dimensions for colon radii and colon thickness, and we get a tension in the walls of Thanos' colon of... 0.2 megapascals, or... over four times less than the ultimate tensile strengthof human colon tissue.
Now, before we conclude,let's just check our numbers with a different source. According to another buttstudy from 2016, entitled Rupture of the Sigmoid ColonCaused by Compressed Air, I quote, "The averagepressure needed to cause "full thickness tearing ofthe human gastrointestinal "tract is 0.29 kilogramsper square centimeter." Can you do the conversion in your head? That's okay, I can. The average PSI needed torupture the human colon is 4.12, or a full 60%more pounds per square inch than we calculatedAnt-Man would be pressing on Thanos' colon with. And so, if our assumptions,estimations, and calculations are reasonable, no,Ant-Man wouldn't be ready to just fly into Thanos'colon, expand, and defeat him from the within out. Thanos' colon would bestrong enough to resist the continued expansion of Ant-Man, and so this meme wouldn't work. And this is especiallytrue if Thanos' colon is much stronger than human butt, which surely, it must be. This meme now has got to be done and dusted. So, could Ant-Man fly intoThanos' butt and expand as a way of finallydefeating the Mad Titan?
Well, if our assumptions and calculations are close to correct, no,he wouldn't be able to. The movies don't reallygive any good indications that Pym particle expansion comes along with any real amount of force. The most straightforwardexample that I could find in the films does throw a car, sure, but if you take thatforce and distribute it across the surface area of Scott Lang's relatively smallerbody, it doesn't produce butt-bursting pressures.
In reality, if Ant-Man tried this meme, he would be stuck inside Thanos' colon, the size of Thanos' colon, and this surely has to be worse than beingstranded in the Soul Stone. Let's turn that into ameme, butt-cause, science. Oh, I guess you could say that Ant-Man wouldn't have rekt-um. You know, I have more butt puns, if you want them, here's another one. (electronic music) I know on the face of it, it sounds maybe a little ridiculous thata human wouldn't be able to enlarge past and get out of something that has a rubbery tensile strength, like you wouldn't be ableto get out of a balloon. However, look at people actually trying to get out of balloons after they do a dumb internet challenge. You can be easily constrained and trapped inside something that hascolon-like properties, so I don't think it's asridiculous as it seems on its face.
Thank you so much for watching, Christina, if you want more of meand you want to suggest ideas for future episodes, please follow us here atthese handles on social media. Also, the fourth episode ofThe Science of Mortal Kombat is now live, we are nearing to a close, and whoa, that last one, hey, we really made thatguy get over here, huh? If you haven't seen it, you'regonna wanna check it out. Thanks. (electronic music)
There's been a meme goingaround for months now that the easiest way to defeatThanos in Avengers: Endgame is for Ant-Man to flyup into Thanos' butt, expand to Giant-Mansize, and then I guess, explode him from the inside out. The idea is gaining so much traction that people are actuallyasking Paul Rudd about it, and surely he has morepromotional things to do. So in the grand tradition of this program, let's take this ridiculoussituation absolutely seriously and try to figure outwhat would really happen in a battle between ScottLang and intes-Titan. (laughs)C'mon, that was pretty good. First, obviously, havingsomeone or something enter your body and thenexpand to human size or greater and explode you would be an absolutely horrible way to die. But Thanos does not have to explode for this Ant-Man move to kill him.
If Ant-Man really entered Thanos' colon, I told you we were gonna takethis absolutely seriously, then all he would have to do is perforate the bowel tissue, or tear through it. Bowel perforation is anextremely serious injury, and that's because manydifferent species of bacteria live inside your guts alongside of you, doing beneficial, sometimes harmful, and sometimes neutral things. But if they get out into yoursurrounding body tissues, they can cause deadly infections. The mortality rate fromthis kind of injury is somewhere between, according to the literature, 11 and 81%. So, if Ant-Man justperforated the colon tissue, that might be enough to defeat Thanos. Our next question is, then, can Ant-Man get into angry Grimace's butt?
Th-anus, and we have theultimate tensile strength of human colon material,which we can compare to Titan colon material. Now though, we butt upagainst our biggest problem. How much pressure does Ant-Man push on the surrounding materialwith when he enlarges? Is it so much that he forcesmaterial out of the way, or is it not enough so he just conforms to the surrounding material? This is very important. We have to solve this, butts depend on it! This is where we have to start making some serious ass-umptionsbecause the movies aren't very clear on exactlyhow Scott Lang's powers work.
Does Ant-Man actually pushon stuff when he enlarges? That makes or breaks this meme, and the movies aren't very clear on this. For example, sometimesAnt-Man is enlarging through the dirt, forcingthat dirt out of the way, which is obviously some amount of force. Other times though, hegets caught expanding inside of a room, like the room itself is keeping him from expanding further, like our Thanos colon might. Other times, whole buildings are expanding with Pym particles,obviously pushing stuff out of the way with some force, but then other times Ant-Man is expanding into a punch like he's providing no force of his own at all. Paul Rudd doesn't even knowhow to approach this question, and he's Ant-Man.
I don't know!I don't know. - I surveyed every singleshrinking or enlarging of Ant-Man or The Wasp inthe entirety of the MCU and found that, more oftenthan not, it is implied that enlarging providessome kind of force. Okay, but how much force? I think the best exampleand most straightforward one might be this, when The Wasp uses her car and Pym particles to launch an SUV. In that scene, the SUVlooks like it's launched at around a 45-degree angle and spends a full two seconds flying through the air. Now in that scene, the car specifically is a 2000 GMC Yukon XL. Yes, we must get this specific.
If we assume that this car gets a rough parabolic trajectoryduring this launch, which I think is a reasonable assumption, then we can use the equationsfor parabolic trajectories to solve for the initial velocity needed to give this car this kind of motion. Then, we can plug thatinitial velocity value into the work-energy equation to see just how much forceapplied over what distance it will take to move thecar from zero velocity in the direction of launchto the initial velocity we just calculated for the parabol-- just a second.
Do all of this and we get a force imparted to the SUV from The Wasp'scar of a little over 100,000 newtons, almost done, butt math! The Wasp's car in this scene, I checked, is a 2010 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, the dimensions of whichyou are seeing right now. I think it is a reasonableassumption to think that this force is being applied over every square inchof the roof of the car, because that is whatis pushing on the SUV, and if you do that, divide the force value by the dimensions of this 2010Mercedes-Benz Sprinter roof, then you get a pressure valueof 2.5 pounds per square inch that Pym particles areallowing that Sprinter to push on the SUV with. Because Ant-Man is using the same Pym particle pushing power, I think that this, thisis our pressure value. Whew, okay so now we haveeverything we should need to take this meme way too seriously. So, Ant-Man shrinks. He moves past fabric, past skin cells, and into Thanos' colon. He then enlarges with Pym particles with 2.5 pounds of forceacting across every square inch of his body, and thereforeagainst the colon walls. Using even more butt studies to get a range of dimensions for colon radii and colon thickness, and we get a tension in the walls of Thanos' colon of... 0.2 megapascals, or... over four times less than the ultimate tensile strengthof human colon tissue.
Now, before we conclude,let's just check our numbers with a different source. According to another buttstudy from 2016, entitled Rupture of the Sigmoid ColonCaused by Compressed Air, I quote, "The averagepressure needed to cause "full thickness tearing ofthe human gastrointestinal "tract is 0.29 kilogramsper square centimeter." Can you do the conversion in your head? That's okay, I can. The average PSI needed torupture the human colon is 4.12, or a full 60%more pounds per square inch than we calculatedAnt-Man would be pressing on Thanos' colon with. And so, if our assumptions,estimations, and calculations are reasonable, no,Ant-Man wouldn't be ready to just fly into Thanos'colon, expand, and defeat him from the within out. Thanos' colon would bestrong enough to resist the continued expansion of Ant-Man, and so this meme wouldn't work. And this is especiallytrue if Thanos' colon is much stronger than human butt, which surely, it must be. This meme now has got to be done and dusted. So, could Ant-Man fly intoThanos' butt and expand as a way of finallydefeating the Mad Titan?
Well, if our assumptions and calculations are close to correct, no,he wouldn't be able to. The movies don't reallygive any good indications that Pym particle expansion comes along with any real amount of force. The most straightforwardexample that I could find in the films does throw a car, sure, but if you take thatforce and distribute it across the surface area of Scott Lang's relatively smallerbody, it doesn't produce butt-bursting pressures.
In reality, if Ant-Man tried this meme, he would be stuck inside Thanos' colon, the size of Thanos' colon, and this surely has to be worse than beingstranded in the Soul Stone. Let's turn that into ameme, butt-cause, science. Oh, I guess you could say that Ant-Man wouldn't have rekt-um. You know, I have more butt puns, if you want them, here's another one. (electronic music) I know on the face of it, it sounds maybe a little ridiculous thata human wouldn't be able to enlarge past and get out of something that has a rubbery tensile strength, like you wouldn't be ableto get out of a balloon. However, look at people actually trying to get out of balloons after they do a dumb internet challenge. You can be easily constrained and trapped inside something that hascolon-like properties, so I don't think it's asridiculous as it seems on its face.
Thank you so much for watching, Christina, if you want more of meand you want to suggest ideas for future episodes, please follow us here atthese handles on social media. Also, the fourth episode ofThe Science of Mortal Kombat is now live, we are nearing to a close, and whoa, that last one, hey, we really made thatguy get over here, huh? If you haven't seen it, you'regonna wanna check it out. Thanks. (electronic music)
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