The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

The BBC reports on an article in The Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter which has looked at creatures which have a naturally evolved ability to scale walls and even run across smooth ceilings such as gecko lizards to see if this ability can be replicated artificially for human use. The millions of fine hairs on the feet of geckos created weak intermolecular forces dubbed ‘Van Der Waals’ forces and are thought to be the secret of how the creatures can adhere to sheer surfaces so easily. Professor Nicola Pugno from the Polytechnic of Turin has been calculating how such adhesion could be re-created in clothing to support the weight of a human body. However, it looks unlikely we will be able to get hold of ‘Spider-Man’ suits that allow us to indulge in wall-crawling in the near future – although geckos show that it can be done and the professor has worked out some of the requirements and forces required to scale up to a human but points out that theorising about it is a long way from actually being able to make such a suit. And then there’s the problem that our muscle arrangements are different from wall-climbers like geckos or spiders and even if a human had a working ‘spider’ suit their muscles may be unable to make full use of it.

(Spider-Man ponders the mysteries of the hairy palms)

Meantime it looks like your best option for this sort of thing is to stick (no pun intended) to the traditional method of being bitten by a radioactive spider. Or there’s the Richard Morgan approach from Woken Furies where his character Takeshi Kovacs has an augmented body (or ‘sleeve’ as they are called) with a gecko modification for climbing, with the gecko-like hairs emerging from his hands like a cat’s claws when he wants them.