Why does Wakanda have no suburbs, and should we destroy them if it did? Is it ethical to become a cyborg, like in the Justice League? Can venom – the toxins or the Marvel character – save your life? In this 2021 New York Comic Con edition of “The LIUniverse,” Astronomer Dr. Charles Liu hosts venom researcher Dr. Mandë Holford and environmental expert Kendra Pierre-Louis for our panel “The Science of Science Fiction.” Speaking to a packed room (in a convention ‘plagued’ by empty panels and COVID-19 attendance limits) the panelists share their insights into the science within the Marvel and DC comics and movies as well as the rest of geekdom. In our three segments on nature, technology, and the multiverse, you’ll hear about superhumans and mutants from Spider-Man to the X-Men to Captain Planet. You’ll also learn some science, like how a version of string theory predicts a parallel universe where gravity would give us all superpowers. One of our favorite parts of our panels is taking questions from the audience. This time, fans like you asked some great ones. How will gene editing change the world? Can we tell if an AI, such as the Vision, is really self aware? Does scientific advancement need military rivalries as in “For All Mankind,” a show that flips the space race on its head? What will be the biggest technological advancement of the next 100 years: perhaps miniature organs, or maybe social innovations, or something else entirely? Plus, find out what on Earth “life expectancy escape velocity” is, and what it could mean for the future of humanity. You can expect to hear about some of your favorite comic superheroes on screen and off, like Black Panther, The Avengers, Wandavision, The Suicide Squad, Braniac, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Black Widow, Loki, The Fantastic Four, Lex Luthor, Ant-Man, and – lest we forget – The Incredible Hulk.  Relive the experience (if you were lucky enough to be there) or find out what you missed!  Geek out with us! Chapters: 0:00 Nature and Our Relationship to It 16:34 Technology, Humans, and Superheroes 34:26 The Multiverse: Reality and Fiction All characters and comic properties are the copyright of their respective owners.

How realistic is the human augmentation depicted in comic, games and movies? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu welcomes the CEO/founder of Neurobionics Dr. MJ Antonini, experimental psychologist Liam McMahon, and our own social media maven and comic/gaming uber-geek Sarah Cotten to the stage for our first-ever appearance at the Boston Fan Expo for a discussion about the science of science fiction, and most particularly, BRAINS! (NOTE: This panel took place during the 2023 writers strike, so our panelists purposefully avoided naming characters our properties out of respect for the striking creators.)  The panel starts off with a discussion of the feasibility of the kind of human augmentation featured in the dystopian near-future game series Deus Ex. Dr. Antonini, whose company is all about human augmentation and wearable robotics, says that it’s not as far away from reality as you might think. Dr. McMahon talks about using magnetism to perceive what’s going on inside the human mind. Meanwhile, Sarah comes up with a reality TV show concept where people can see through the prosthetic eye of the show’s protagonist. When Liam brings up the concept of memory augmentation, sharing and retrieval, Charles immediately reminds us all of Philip K. Dick’s “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,” perhaps better known as the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie “Total Recall.” You’ll hear about exoskeletons that can help paralyzed people walk and even kick a soccer ball, and research by David Sinclair at Harvard into slowing down the aging process or even reversing the aging of the human brain. Of course, as Sarah points out, living forever is different than being young forever, unless of course you’re an ageless vampire with a bulging bank account. The panel discusses the impact of immortality on resources, offspring, and the human psyche, which gives Chuck the opportunity to reference “The Last Question” by Isaac Asimov. Of course, there’s no avoiding the subject of Artificial Intelligence and the Internet, and the morality and ethics of both, which naturally leads into a discussion of dystopian, post-apocalyptic fiction and games like “Fallout” and the seminal and influential 1984 anime fantasy film “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind” by the legendary Hayao Miyazaki. The panel ends with a discussion of Alzheimer’s disease, brain augmentation and uploading, what makes personality, and the metaphysical thought experiment known as the Ship of Theseus. Normally at conventions like this, we end with a vigorous Q&A session, and this event was no exception. But this time if you’d like to hear the Q&A and the rest of the panel content that didn’t make it into this video, you’ll have to check it out on Patreon. We hope you enjoy this episode of The LIUniverse, and, if you do, please also support us on Patreon. 

How do planets form out of dust particles? And what does that have to do with fluid dynamics? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome astrophysicist Dr. Holly Capelo from the University of Bern in Switzerland.   As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing, which takes us to the Observatory of Paris, where a group of scientists are delving into the formation of planetesimals. What are they, where do they come from, and when do they form? Holly dives right in to explain what we know about them, and what forces might prevent planetesimals from growing into planets. Along the way, she blows Chuck’s mind about planet formation and accretion disks.   Next, Dr. Capelo uses Alice in Wonderland to help describe her extensive experiments flying on Novespace’s Air Zero-G (the European equivalent of NASA’s “Vomit Comet”) flying in parabolas in order to better understand fluid dynamics, aerodynamic drag and the impact of freefall, microgravity and hypergravity on dust particles.   For our first question this episode, Allen asks Holly about what makes up interplanetary debris, now and in the past. You’ll learn all about ice lines, the impact of vacuum on water vapor and dust particles, minimum mass solar nebulas, density distributions and how much debris there actually is floating around our solar system.    You’ll also hear a little bit about Holly’s other experiences, as a dancer, and how grad school made it harder to stay in shape.   Our next question revolves around the possible atmospheres of the Moon, comets and planetesimals. Holly explains how we have evidence of transitory events, like outgassing. She also tells us about an upcoming “comet interceptor” mission to study comets that will place a satellite at a Lagrange point to wait for a comet to enter our solar system and then fly to meet it.    If you’d like to know more about Holly and her experiments, you can follow her on Twitter @hollycapelo.   We hope you enjoy this episode of The LIUniverse, and, if you do, please support us on Patreon.    Credits for Images Used in this Episode: Accretion disks imaged by ALMA – European Southern Observatory, CC BY 4.0 Phase diagram of water – Hokanomono & Cmglee on Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 Novespace’s Air Zero-G aircraft – Marc Lacoste, CC BY-SA 4.0 Illustration of Rosetta at comet 67P – Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, CC-BY 3.0

How do you go about building a planet? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome computational astrophysicist Dr. Aleksandra Kuznetsova, a NHFP Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow at The American Museum of Natural History. As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing, the presence of both a mini-Neptune and an exo-Venus in the exoplanetary system GJ3929, each with very short orbits around their star. Aleksandra discusses planetary migration and how it’s possible to have as tightly packed solar systems as GJ3929. For our first student question, Kevin asks, “How can you create an artificial magnetic field for a planet like Mars?” Aleksandra explains the importance of Earth’s geodynamo in creating our magnetic field, and how it results from our rotating core of molten conductive metal material. This being The LIUniverse, of course a discussion of the movie “The Core” ensues, along with deeper dives into the kinetic energy of Earth’s rotation what it might take to re-spin a planetary core. And then we’re off and running with the subject that’s near and dear to Aleksandra, the simulation of planetary formation. You’ll hear about our attempts to observe the “embedded phase” of planetary system development and the challenges of observation prior to the JWST with terrestrial radio telescopes like ALMA and the ngVLA. It turns out that protoplanetary disks in the embedded phase are quite “messy!” Our second question comes from one of our Patrons on Patreon, Cameron, who asks, “Carl Sagan said, “We are a way for the universe to know itself,” but is there a stigma that makes this knowledge unattractive to people? How do we inspire more people to learn more?”   Aleksandra brings up the idea of using language or art to inspire awe and wonder in people. For instance, the art of Wassily Kandinsky. It turns out, not only is Composition 8 by the artist Chuck’s favorite piece of non-representational art, but Aleksandra shares what a natural science nerd Kandinsky was and how intrigued he was by early microscopy images, as evidenced by his painting Capricious Forms. Before the episode wraps, Aleksandra, Chuck, and Allen bond about how much they loved the movie, Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.   If you’d like to know more about Dr. Kuznetsova and her research, visit her website at https://www.astrokuznetsova.com/ or follow her on X (Twitter) @1auaway.   We hope you enjoy this episode of The LIUniverse, and, if you do, please support us on Patreon.   Credits for Images Used in this Episode: – Artist’s impression of a protoplanetary disk – ESO/L. Calçada, CC BY 4.0 – Illustration of Earth’s magnetic field – NASA, public domain – Diagram of Earth’s geodynamo – Andrew Z. Colvin, CC BY-SA 4.0 – Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Station in South Korea –핑크로즈, CC BY 2.0 – Radio telescopes in the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) – ESO/C. Pontoni, CC BY 4.0 – Radio telescopes in the ngVLA –  CGP Grey, CC BY 2.0 – Composition 8 by Wassily Kandinsky – Wassily Kandinsky, 1923, Public Domain – Capricious Forms by Wassily Kandinsky – Wassily Kandinsky, 1937, Public Domain

Brown dwarfs are often called failed stars, but today’s guest on the LIUniverse, astrophysicist Dr. Johanna Vos, prefers to think of them as overachieving planets. Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu discuss with Johanna why brown dwarfs are so cool (pun intended!), and how their formation is something of a cosmic-scale anticlimax.   Beginning with today’s joyfully cool cosmic thing, a pair of brown dwarfs orbiting each other more than a hundred times farther than the Earth is from the Sun, we’ll go into how astronomers study these objects from here on Earth and from our observatories in space such as the brand new James Webb Space Telescope. Along the way, we’ll learn how the astronomical community decides which of the sky’s numerous exciting objects get seen with these cutting-edge facilities.   In fact, that leads right into our first student question for this episode, in which Nevan asks what object our guest thinks the JWST should look at first. While Johanna answers with one of her favorite objects, in typical Chuck fashion we end up on the ice planet Hoth*. We also have a question from Aryeh who asks for some advice for current students interested in astronomy. (As always, if you want your questions answered, support the LIUniverse on Patreon!)   Next, Johanna explores some of the differences between her own experience with the education system in Ireland and Scotland and what she sees from the students she mentors in New York. We also get to hear about Johanna’s experience dancing ballet. She shares which ballets are her favorites to view and to perform, and what dance – and art more generally – has in common with Astronomy.   To keep up with our guest’s exciting astronomical research, you can follow @Johannamvos on Twitter, and don’t forget to subscribe to us here on YouTube so you can catch every episode as soon as it comes out!   *For those of you who don’t know, Hoth first appears in the Empire Strikes Back, aka Star Wars Episode V.   Credits for Images Used in this Episode:    - A stellar nursery in the Orion Nebula – Credit: Hubble Space Telescope, NASA/ESA  - Planet-forming disk around the star HL Tauri – Credit: ALMA, CC-BY 4.0 - Wise 0855 moving through the sky – Credit: WISE/Spitzer, NASA/JPL-Caltech/Penn State University - The New Technology Telescope in Chile  – Credit: ESO/B. Tafreshi (twanight.org), CC-BY 4.0