• Question: do u think that we will be able to develop a peice of tech that can shrink us to a molecular level?

    Asked by anon-217599 to Savannah on 10 Jun 2019.
    • Photo: Savannah Clawson

      Savannah Clawson answered on 10 Jun 2019:


      Shrink rays are very popular in sci-fi movies but I think there are sadly a few too many issues for them to ever be realised in real life (at least if we’re talking about shrinking people).

      First of all, if we are shrunk down to the size of atoms, then we wouldn’t be able to breathe the air around us as air molecules would be as big as us! This would be like trying to swallow a football just to breathe one bit of air! The same goes for eating and drinking… It would also be impossible to move about due to constantly being bashed by all of the other molecules around us.

      You might have also heard of Einstein’s famous law connecting energy and mass: E=mc^2. If the shrunken person suddenly gets a lot lighter, all of that energy has to go somewhere and this is enough energy to create a pretty impressive explosion if all released at once!

      So no shrink rays any time soon unless we really mess with the laws of physics – I’ll let you decide if that’s a good or bad thing 😉

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