• Question: Do you think that shapeshifting will become possible in the future?

    Asked by Hannah to Ed, Kerrianne, Nina, Oli, yoyehudi on 9 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Oli Wilson

      Oli Wilson answered on 9 Nov 2017:

      Hey Hannah, interesting question! Someone else asked about shape shifting the other day – you can have a look at my answer here if you want ////neptuniumn17-zone//2017/11/04/why-cant-we-shapeshift/
      Basically, I don’t think we’re likely to get much better st shape shifting on our own. Our brains are already about as good as they need to be for this, and it’s hard to imagine our bodies adapting in any of the ways the master-shapeshifter cuttlefish shows. Where we might get better is in our use of technology – the final link in that other answer shows someone wearing something called a ghillie suit, which is sometimes worn by hunters and soldiers. It’s an old form of camouflage but it’s very effective! In the future we might have invented some form of invisibility cloak – news stories like this one make it sound like it’s more possible than it may sound! https://phys.org/news/2017-08-invisibility-cloak-closer-revealing.html Changing the way light interacts with our bodies will let us change our appearance to others – certainly sounds like shapeshifting to me 🙂

    • Photo: Ed Bracey

      Ed Bracey answered on 15 Nov 2017:

      I hope so!
      I’d be really interested to create a body that could do this.
      We’d have to think carefully about how we would control the cells that made up that body.
      We’d have to have really stretchy nerve cells that could control where the rest of our cells on our bodies would go, and also move with them.
      Or maybe we could control where the cells go with some sort of wifi!

Comments