Blogpost 6: Superpowers That We Won't Be Able To Have According To Science

I could think of a lot of powers I would like to have if given the chance. It's as many as my imagination could give me. I am not sure which one to get because I have unlimited wants because each power are unique in their own way. It's important to have a superpower because that's the necessary key to become a superhero. So I want the best superpower so that I could beat any villain that comes my way. Then there superpowers that couldn't be possible for the human body according to science...

In my research I found an article entitled " 7 Awesome Superpowers (Ruined By Science) " by Michael Smathers from the website " Cracked ". The article is about cool superpowers that would best fit a superhero. The problem is there are facts that contradict the superpowers.

The article mentioned 7 superpowers an here they are. The first one is flight, it would be awesome to be able to fly. I'm sure everyone wanted to have this superpower in one point of their lives. It would be awesome and convenient if you were able to just fly to your destinations, it would be less hassle for the person who can fly. But then the problem with that is the speed you have when you are flying, anything that is faster than a hang glider should have a windshield in front because when you are fast, imagine what will it do to your face.

The next superpower is one of my favorites, super strength. When you have super strength, you could basically do anything because you can carry any heavy object, destroy anything that obstructs your path, destroy everything that you hate. It is also a convenient superpower because the possibilities with this power seems unlimited too. Now, let's put physics into the equation, the strength that you have is concentrated in your body so the part that touches with any other object will feel the pressure from that concentrated strength and that's not good. "You can thank the laws of physics, specifically, pressure. Because all of your super strength is concentrated in your tiny little hands, you're basically like a dagger plunging into a watermelon." Says Michael Smathers. It means that the pressure that you have because of your concentrated super strength is very dangerous.

With the current capabilities of an average human being, flying isn't possible. But that doesn't mean humans can't fly, a person who can be an example is Yves Rossi. I have searched for an article and it's entitled " 
‘Jetman’ Yves Rossy Shows Us How to Fly His Carbon Fiber Jet Wing ". by Jason Paur from the website " Wired ". Yves Rossi is a 54-year-old pilot who has been flying for a long time now. He uses a jet pack which is composed of carbon fiber and 4 small engines. He has been exhibiting his jet pack for a long time too, he has used it in the English channel, and the Grand Canyon just to name some of his feats. This is the closest thing we have to human's flying.

The future isn't determined by what we have know, who knows maybe one day it would be possible for human beings to have the power to fly, or super strength without the possibility of killing someone just by touching them or even any other superpower that science dictates we can't do.

Blogpost 5:Effects of Superheroes on Children

Superheroes are awesome because they get to do other people can't. They get the attention of people and it makes some individuals jealous or intimidated. Superheroes seen from movies, or read from comic books affect people. Everyone is interested in superheroes, not only the teenagers but also the youth, the children. This blog is all about how Superheroes affect the minds of the children. Of course there are two sides to the effect. The positive side and the negative side.

 In my research, I came upon an article entitled "From Superhero to Real-Life Hero: Encouraging Healthy Play" by Shelley Butler and Deb Kratz from the website "earlychildhoodnews" that children uses Superheroes as motivation for them to be better people when they grow up. Why superheroes? Because Superheroes by definition are courageous, powerful, and they seem to overcome any obstacle that comes their way. Young children are faced with challenges or obstacles everyday because they learn new things daily. Of course sometimes they won't be able to overcome these challenges so they feel small, powerless, fear. They are unable to do what they want to so they become troubled. But when they get to play as a superhero. They feel strong and awesome so they feel relieved for the moment because they get to be the person different people wants to be. So in short, being the superhero affects the child and makes them more happy. When they are playing, the character they portray gives them knowledge in what is right and what is wrong. So they learn lessons not only about which power is stronger but also the lessons valuable in life.
"Through play, children test the waters, try out roles and behaviors, investigate right and wrong, experiment with language, use creativity, find outlets for physical activity, and learn more about difficult skills like impulse control and conflict resolution" says the editors. It simply means that play is very important to a child's learning process because they get to test out things that they find interesting. What more if they play as super heroes? They get to be the character they wish and they get to feel happy.

The next article is entitled "Superheroes Send Out 'Wrong Message" to boys" by Richard Alleyne from the website "Telegraph" is about the bad effect superheroes bring to children especially boys. The article claims that movies with scenes of the superheroes beating up the villains causes the child to be more violent. It gives kids more information and knowledge about the things they shouldn't be doing, like fighting each other. They become more prone to fights because of the things they see in the movies. They will think that it's cool so they themselves will try it out.

Next argument they bring to the table is that most superheroes in the movies show bad behavior that children shouldn't do. Like in the movie Iron man wherein the main character there is Tony Stark. When he is not in the suit he exploits women and show of his richness to other people. Not a good trait to show the children isn't it? 

"There is a big difference in the movie superhero of today and the comic book superhero of yesterday." They say that in the comic book, the superheroes were presented as powerful gentlemen. They were more respectable in the comic series than in the movies nowadays.

In my opinion, it will depend on the people surrounding them too. Of course the kid will get confused with what is right and wrong, but if their guardian is always there to clear things with them then it will be alright. They will be guided in the right path because they will get answers from people older than them. 

Blogpost 4: Real People With Superpowers

People believe that having superpowers in the real world is definitely not possible. They do not believe because they think that science isn't that much developed to be able to produce different people with different special abilities. They don't believe in what they don't see so they become ignorant and naive about the things surrounding them. They do not see that there is more to the world that meets the eye. There are certain individuals in the world that are different.

In my research I was able to look for an article entitled " 7 People From Around the World With Real Mutant Superpowers " By June Arteaga from the website " Cracked "
There are a lot of certain people around the world that has extraordinary abilities that, for me, can be classified as superpowers because they have abilities that cannot be seen in any average person. Who are these people? Here they are.

There is this boy with a nickname "Das Uberboy"

(This is not Das Uberboy)

His real name is being kept a secret to protect the person's privacy and security. On 1999 a boy was born in Germany, at that point the nurses and doctors knew that there was something different with the boy. The baby's muscles were twitching and it's shaped unlike any other muscles we see babies have. How did this happen? It is a genetic mutation technique that cattle farmers intentionally use in order to breed muscular cows.
All we have is this quote that is from The Washington Post despite sounding like it's from a Marvel origin: "But inasmuch as no one has ever encountered a child such as this boy or studied animals with defective myostatin genes into old age, his health and eventual strength remains unknown." It means that he is the first pewson ever recorded to have defective myostatin and we cannot assure what the future will bring him.

I researched more about the topic and I was able to stumble upon an article entitled " Super Strong Kids May Hold Genetic Secrets " By Lauren Cox from the website " abcnews " that Das Uberboy isn't the only case with a baby with defective myostatin. Myostatin is a secreted growth differentiation factor that is a member of the TGF beta protein family that inhibits muscle differentiation and growth in the process known as myogenesis. The problem with the babies is that they are always hungry for a full appetite meal and it is because of their rapid metabolism.

#2 Captain Sonar

Daredevil and Ben Underwood

Ben Underwood uses Super Echolocation in order to see things in a different kind of way. He is like Daredevil because he uses Sonar waves in order for them to see, and they're both blind.
According to the article entitled " Human Echolocation I " by Lore Thaler in the website " Journal Of Wisdom ". Bats and dolphins aren't the only mammals that use the ability to use sounds alone to identify objects and navigate unfamiliar surroundings. New research shows that blind people are also capable of using this build in mechanism. Most people rapidly click their tongue and use the echoes from the sound to determine what is around.
"He's gotten so good at it that he's now capable of Rollerblading, skateboarding, playing basketball, foosball and even video games." says the editor in cracked. It means that he is developing and he is getting better with using his echolocation.

With what I have researched I could say that everything evolves through time and It is possible that even human beings can change. Who knows what will happen in the future? Who knows what the future will bring?

Blogpost 3: 5 Superpowers We All Had As Babies

When we look at babies what do we see? We see cute little tiny versions of humans we think, can't do anything without help or assistance from the elders. That is wrong because in my blog, you will see things that babies have that we dont.

An article at "Cracked.com" explores the fact that every human being on the planet is born with super powers, from telepathy to heightened senses - we just grow out of them. It's a bird! It's a plane! It's super babies! Scientists love studying babies more than they enjoy studying rats and monkeys, mainly because babies are so delicious much more similar to real human beings than animals are. What's that? Babies are human too? I beg to differ, and science begs to differ as well. If babies were humans, would they be able to read minds? Of course they wouldn't, and they can't, but they do have powers similar to mind reading that baffle scientists on a regular basis. 

In an article called "5 Superpowers We All Had as Babies (According to Science)," Cracked's Cezary Jan Strusiewicz explores some of the amazing things babies can do before they grow up and become annoying preteens. For instance, mind reading. It isn't really mind reading, but scientists have found that babies are able to read subtle facial expressions in the adults in their lives so acutely that it verges on supernatural.n 2007, the team at the University of Washington Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences conducted an experiment with 18-month old toddlers found they become so sensitive to the subtlest psychological changes in a person's expressions that it might actually explain why they always cry when you come anywhere near them. They can feel the deep-seeded hatred for all things baby under that fake smile of yours.This strange power even extends to animals, according to a Brigham Young study that discovered that babies under six months could match a dog's bark to its picture without ever coming into contact with the animal. Bizarre! Of course then we grow up and it all turns to crap. Sadly, 

these amazing abilities get lost the minute the babies learn how to talk and get their hands on Twitter, becoming the modern age nonverbal-communication cripples. Before that though, they are basically Lil' Professor Xaviers. What other powers do babies have? How about extreme eyesight? Another study, conducted on a herd of six and nine month old children found that the younger babies could discern between two different monkeys, while the older babies could not. This tells us that somewhere between six months and nine months, babies get stupid. How does that happen? The thing is, adult brains are very busy and don't have time for such trifle things as actually "seeing" colors. From the time we acquire language (seven to nine months old), our brains start perceiving only the "idea" of a color rather than the real thing, unlike all the toddlers who see the world for what it really is. It's like us adults are living in a perpetual Matrix where everything we see is a lie, and all infant babies are Neo. Babies also have hypersensitive hearing. Unlike adults that have developed the ability to filter out non-essential sounds, like air conditioners or our bosses asking us when this article will be ready, to babies, every sound is essential, and they can hear things happening in the next room as if it were happening right in front of them, hence all the crying. Babies even have stronger brains than adults. Humans are born with around 100 billion neurons, same as the number of stars in the Milky Way. However, without a large number of synapses, having lots of neurons is like owning an impressive gun collection with only peas and carrots to load them with. By age three, babies have around 15,000 synapses per neuron... three times as much as an adult in his prime.P

Unfortunately, the adult mind can't deal with that much information being processed at all times, so our synapses get trimmed as we age, which Strusiewicz likens to "But all good things must come to an end. Our minds just aren't designed to deal with so much information in the long run, so between years four and six the number of synapses in our neurons gets trimmed by more than 2/3rds." The mind of the baby is to much for their body to handle so part of it growing up is to be able to discard the abilities.

According to the article "Baby Super Powers" by anthropologist Stephen Juan from the site " today.ninemsn.com.au "


Babies Can read the moods of people in their surroundings especially their caregiver. 
The belief used to be that babies were blind but studies have indicated that babies can see 25cm away. 
Using all their senses, the baby is continually perceiving and learning about the world they have come into and they don't have the filtering system we have as adults. Adults usually block out 98% of what they see and hear but babies block out less. 
The newborn's sense of smell is very strong, it's the newborn's strongest sense of all the senses. A newborn can tell the difference between their mother's milk and another breastfeeding mother's milk. They can also tell their own mother's body smell.
The point here is we need to take a short break from whining over not having real super powers so we can lament the ones we did have that disappeared as we became so-called productive human beings.P

Blogpost 2: Common Superpowers People Think They Have.

I'm sure that everyone of us had points in our lives wherein we believe that we have super powers hidden within us. We believed that we have special abilities that others don't and that is what differentiate us from the rest of the people. There are things we just can't explain and because of that we first conclude to believe in the super natural. Most of the people just base reality with their opinion, and not facts.


In my research, I have found an article about the top list of powers people think they have. The article is entitled " 4 'Superpowers' Everyone Thinks They Secretly Have " By Soren Bowie In the website " Cracked ". What are the super powers people think they secretly have? Let's find out.
controlling the outcome of professional sports is one of the superpowers people think they have.

The most craziest fans of anything in the world, are the sports fanatics. They do anything just to show support for their favorite team and they would do exactly anything for their team. In order to be a sports fan, you should be able to put your heart out in order to show support for your team. Now, going back to the topic. Most of the sports fans if not all, at one point, believed that if they wished for their team to win, they could make it happen. They believed that the outcome of the game could be determined by how much you wish your time to win. 

People love communicating with inanimate objects.

I'm sure that we all have experienced having troubles with your electronics, cars, gadgets. If we don't know what to do, sometimes we speak to these objects and kindly ask them to work already. If we are patient enough, we even talk to the objects until we could fix them and not destroy the object completely like what this guy did. I honestly had experienced this when my phone wasn't turning on. I almost cried because I was just a kid back then and I was lost in a place that I wasn't familiar with. It would be convenient if we could just ask our broken electronics and ask if it could just fix itself, or do commands we are too lazy to do ourselves.

Reading omens is one of the powers people think they have.

In classical times the reading of portents and omens was a matter of great political import. In Classical Rome the Augurs ability to foretell the future by taking of the Auspices through reading the flight of birds was utilized in strategizing wars, directing the lives of the people and in determining religious ceremony. In Celtic culture the Druids foretold the future through the growth and movement of trees. Throughout history and across all continents indigenous cultures have been known to rely on the art of divination through the reading of natural omens and signs. Unfortunately , over time, much of the art has taken a back burner to modern day life or have been forgotten all together. There are still religious groups and lay practitioners who work diligently to preserve and perfect these old ways, and resources exist for those who are interested in learning. The birds in the picture represents reading omens because it symbolizes witchcraft. Most people especially Filipinos think that they have the power to read omens because most of the elderly people think that signs of omens indicate that the omen or something else will really happen.



Causing disasters by joking about them is one of the powers people think they have.

I was on a cruise trip last vacation during which the captain joked over the intercom that we should all hold on tight because the ship was so full that the ship might just sink. He was booed after that unnecessary comment by a few passengers, and the woman seated in front of me made demands to another personnel that he be fired. She said, "He could have gotten us all killed. There are just some things you don't joke about unless you want them to happen."
At first I thought she was being ridiculous, but on the off chance that he really did have the ability to incite tragedy just by mentioning its possibility, then I agree with her that working in a floating steel tube is probably not the best job for him. Most people don't like joking about the bad happenings around us because they believe that doing so will trigger something in the reality thus making the occurrence real.

"The truth is, there's a little bit of crazy lady from 14D in all of us. We believe we have the power to jinx situations acknowledging the worst case scenario out loud, like atrocities are T. rexes that can only find us when we make noise. It's a movie universe rule that accidentally infiltrated our lives and saddled us all with the belief that we can curse trains into derailment and our friends into cancer just by thinking about it." Says the editor in cracked.com. It is not their fault if people believe in those type of stereotypical things that people say because I think it's human nature for people to say those kinds of things. It's natural for us to say what we believe in and there is nothing wrong with our opinion.

In my opinion, these aren't really superpowers. They are more like superstitions that people believe in. According the article that I read, which is entitled " The Psychology of Superstition " by Sarah Albert in the website " Webmd ". Not all rituals or beliefs are superstitions. "The dividing line is whether you give some kind of magical significance to the ritual" Says the author. It means that superstitions are only superstitions depending on your own opinion of super natural or magical to the ritual. For example, a basketball athlete like LeBron James has a pre-game ritual of blowing powder before his fans. It is not a superstition but if you tap the ball three times before shooting it, thinking that you will make the basket then you have ventured superstitious territory my friend. Is having super powers really just a superstition? Or can it be a reality?

Blogpost 1: Attainable Super Powers Because Of Science

 
      "With great power comes great responsibility" - Peter Parker A.K.A The Spiderman

Superpowers are abilities uncommon to the average human. There are many different types of superpowers though most are physical, mental, technological, or mystical. Powers can be inherited from parents, bestowed by a higher power, acquired by exposure to an outside force or passed to them by others.

People say that having super powers or unnatural abilities isn't possible. Like having the powers of spiderman wherein he can shoot spider webs from his wrists, jump over buildings, have unnatural flexibility, his super-sensing ability. Science is systematized body of knowledge and it continues to grow as more knowledge is learned by people around the world. Having super powers because of science is possible. What are the possible powers science can give us?



While I was researching on my topic I stumbled upon this article entitled "5 Superpowers Science Will Give Us In Our Lifetime" by Luis Prada in the website "Cracked". The rapid evolution of technology has made it possible for people to experience or see unnatural abilities in real life.
An example of the powers that could be possible because of science is Spiderman's web-slinging and wall climbing ability. How? Carbon Nanotube Technology. It is similar to Velcro which can be formed as a series of hooks and loops that interlock, thereby creating a clinging effect. Unlike Velcro, these hooks and loops are microscopic and can latch on to nearly any surface imaginable, even while underwater.

According to Italian scientist Nicola Pugno, the creator of nanotube, if the material is placed on gloves and boots, spiderman's wall-climbing ability would be attainable because nanotube could be able to keep a fully grown person suspended on a ceiling.

As I continued my research, I saw an article called "New Nanoglue Likes It Hot" written by Magdalena Kogutowska in the website "newscientist"

There is another spiderman tech but is more of a theory, it is called the nanoglue.

Nanolayers are composed of molecular chains of carbon molecules with elements such as silicon, oxygen or sulfur.  A group of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute scientists working with nanolayers accidentally found out that heating nanolayers creates a bond that is similar to copper and silica. Professor Ganapathiraman Ramanath, who was the leader of the project, said that the nanoglue technology could be the right material needed for spiderman's web shooters.



"If we can find a way to create threads and/or intertwined bundles using the molecules in a scalable fashion, while retaining the adhesive properties, then creating web-shooters similar to Spiderman's is a real possibility," says the proffesor. It simply means that if the team could only find out ways on how to make strands with the material while keeping its adhesive ability, he could turn spiderman's web-slinging ability into a reality.

I'm a big fan of superpowers and I find it amazing how the scientists were able to create ways on how super powers can be possible. Some might be theories but theories nonetheless. There is a possibilty for it to happen and that's what really matters. If the technologhy actually works in the future it wouldn't only make people look cool, it could help the human society in a lot of ways. It could be used by law enforcers so that they have an edge over the criminals, it could be used in movies so that the films will be more realistic. Then again, everything always has a negative side. If ever the technology do works it might be expensive, or it could be manupilated by the government or it could be used be used by people for the wrong intentions. What may happen, we don't know. All we could do right now is to wait and see.