Sci-fi Super Heroes Become Sci-fact

If you’re the kind of engineer who wishes sci-fi would hurry up and become sci-fact, you’re in luck.

As science and technology advance at blistering speed, super hero powers are increasingly falling into human hands and turning mere mortals into powerful superhuman-like beings.

Feel the urge to climb a vertical surface? You can already buy suction boots and gloves. Wanderlust much? Fuel your escape with an already available jetpack. And listen up, you can even supercharge your hearing or upgrade your vision, all with off-the-shelf consumer electronics.

Speaking of which, the smartphone you have semi-permanently fused to your hand cyborg-style gives you the ex-telligence to answer almost any question in seconds, and that tablet lying at the bottom of your backpack has more compute performance than the first shuttles to the moon.

Are you a fan of a super hero’s go-to weapon? You can 3D print it, or any other tool for that matter. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can even add or enhance your body parts with additive manufacturing like 3D printers, computer numerical control (CNC) mills and laser cutters, too.

New materials like graphene also mean Iron Man-style exoskeletons and protective shields á-la Captain America aren’t just possible, but also incredibly lightweight and strong, while new "electrical muscles" makes operating them easy. In fact, the US military is already developing such things for an army of super-soldiers.

Feeling the need for speed? Look no further than your Olympic team. Athletes and their support staff are constantly tweaking their physiology, nutrition or equipment in the quest for even 1% improvements.

It’s already possible to make bones stronger with titanium implants and genetically engineer our muscles to have more “fast twitch” cells to make us speedier, and even our blood can be made to pump more efficiently with heart boosters. Don’t believe me? FaceTime your doctor and ask.

Speaking of which, that kind of pervasive availability of information, which allows for the rapid acceleration of processes and equipment, is also sort of super. And we’re only at the cusp of the robotics and artificial intelligence era.

Soon, according to many tech-sperts and futurists, we’ll be able to become even more “super-human” when we converge with machines. That may sound far-fetched, but consider this: Anyone with a pacemaker is already bionic. Now just add a brain-computer interface to the mix to control robotic arms for amputees or full exoskeletons, and you have yourself a game changer for people with muscle weakening as a result of paralysis, stroke, age, autoimmune disease and more.

There are even current medical trials using sensors inside blood vessels to provide a minute-by- minute report card on a patient’s health, automatically syncing the results to a smartphone. Based on the results, swarms of micro-robots can then be automatically deployed on the cellular level inside the body to fix any "Error" before the patient even starts to exhibit symptoms.

Looking to supercharge your sight? It’s already possible to augment vision into both the Ultra Violet and Infrared, stretching our visible electromagnetic spectrum and allowing us to see much more. And good news, they’re building IR contact lenses, so no need for geeky glasses.

Looking for an out-of-body super hero experience? You don’t need to be a mutant to pull of holographic projection anymore, either. Virtual and augmented reality have you covered.

Of course, while some superpowers – like Ant-Man’s ability to shrink to the size of a bug – are sadly violations of the conservation of matter – there are many more that are not just possible, but becoming practical parts of daily life.

If the laws of physics aren’t violated, then it's probably possible! Simply look out not to violate those pesky conservation laws, find enough energy to power your power, and you’re in business!

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Love comics and love tech? Be sure to stay tuned for what Mouser will be doing in upcoming episodes of the Empowering Innovation Together program, along with celebrity engineer, former Mythbuster and longtime Mouser customer, Grant Imahara.

The launch of the Mouser Innovation Lab means having a space to build cutting-edge projects to push the boundaries of science in order to reach, inspire and engage engineers of all ages.