Vibranium... Soonish

When will the chemists successfully synthesize a material with similar properties to vibranium? Soonish.

How long is Soonish? Just over 350 pages including the index. I’m referring to the book Soonish by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, a scientist and cartoonish husband-and-wife team. The subtitle of the book tells it all: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything. What are those ten technologies?

·      Cheap access to [outer] space

·      Asteroid mining

·      Fusion power

·      Programmable matter

·      Robotic construction

·      Augmented reality

·      Synthetic biology

·      Precision medicine

·      Bioprinting

·      Brain-computer interfaces

Okay, how long is soonish? The emphasis is on the –ish according to the authors. It may be 20, 30, 50 years, or more. Or never. There is some progress being made in all those areas, except perhaps asteroid mining – unless we get cheaper access to outer space. The authors estimate the present cost as $10,000 per pound you’re sending into space, but that cost is dropping. Each chapter imagines a scenario where sci-fi has become reality, what we would take to get there, and where we are along that journey. But the best part of the book is that this is done with jokes every 2-3 sentences and funny cartoons to keep the reader entertained. The jokes per minute rate far exceeds We Have No Idea by Cham & Whiteson.

Having just watched the latest Marvel offering Black Panther, reading about Programmable Matter in Soonish, and reading about shape-shifting materials in last week’s Chemical & Engineering News, I’ve been thinking about new materials that have the whiff of a Transfiguration spell. The magic is in designing a material that, when provided the appropriate stimulus, transforms itself or another substance. A year ago, I had my General Chemistry students invent a new element and discuss how and why it would be useful, as their final project.

I don’t know much about vibranium. From the movie, it’s primary ability seems to be the absorption and transformation of energy, which then allows it to transform other materials. The vast technological apparatus of Wakanda is built (somehow) by using vibranium to transform pretty much anything else. Presumably, there is much scientific and engineering know-how required to utilize the vibranium. The Black Panther suit absorbs energy and re-releases it in battle. Vibranium weapons can transform cars into metallic smithereens with a single shot.

In Harry Potter’s world, you have magical Transfiguration instead of vibranium. But if casting a spell is simply the utilization of electromagnetic (energy) waves, perhaps it is not so different than a substance that stores and transforms energies through vibrations. Waves are oscillations, and they vibrate at characteristic frequencies that tell us how much energy they carry. Vibranium is like magic. Any sufficiently advanced technology looks like magic, although Transfiguration has its limits.

So how far are we from making vibranium? Well, apparently you can make cool self-folding materials that respond to light (electromagnetic radiation) of different wavelengths. Here’s a cool video from the North Carolina State University research group working on this. The materials are ‘shape-shifting’ polymers. We’ve had shape-memory materials for a while now. Aerogels are another interesting substance that allow for changes in size and shape. For a super-strong material that can absorb energy, we have Kevlar – a polymer that could be a stepping stone to vibranium if that energy could be stored in some way and then released.

In their chapter on Programmable Material, the authors of Soonish discuss several more exotic things people are working on. Origami robots could be useful, particularly if you needed to send one through the entire length of your digestive tract. What about reconfigurable houses or workspaces? A table that can transform into a chair with an arm that turns into a reading lamp, perhaps? Or a swarm of tiny robots with directional magnets that can join in different configurations to form different tools. They could work together like nanobots in a sci-fi movie, controlled by wifi or some other remote method. Of course, these could be hacked for nefarious purposes.

Each chapter has a section on Concerns, should the technology become a reality, and a section on How It Would Change the World. It’s an amusing read, both thoughtful and entertaining. But in terms of learning something useful, I think Cham & Whiteson do a better job. Amidst the ridiculous amount of wise-cracking, the running joke through the book is a Terminator-esque impending Robot Uprising in 2027. That sounds soonish to me.