Good morrow all. In the wake of all the science of Iron Man articles that came online when that movie came out, I’m now going to do one in the spirit of the Incredible Hulk. I thought it would be appropriate seeing as how today is opening day for the new movie. Except in Australia. You lucky Aussies had it yesterday, stupid timezones. Anyway, we’re going to cover some of the science that could make the Jade Giant possible in the real world. Enjoy!
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Bigger Really IS Better!
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The Hulk is normally a puny little runt of a scientist until he gets the rage going on. Then he sprouts up several feet into a green engine of destruction. How could this work? Could anyone ever be that big? Some people already are, Leonid Stadnyk is currently the world’s tallest man at 8 feet 5 inches tall. He recently took the record from Bao Xishun who was almost 7ft 9in tall, and who unlike many human giants, apparently doesn’t suffer from gigantism.
The tallest man ever was Robert Wadlow at the towering height of 8′ 11″. His gigantism, like that of other people, was caused by a tumor which caused hypertrophy of his pituitary gland.
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All in all, there IS a basis for the giant Hulk. If pituitary hypertrophy were induced and then constantly monitored and regulated, a healthy Hulk could be made.
One Size Doesn’t Fit All
This was a toughie, the Hulk rapidly changes size very dramatically and often. Going from 5 foot whatever of puny Banner in to 7 or 8+ feet of savagery. The first movie covered it very interestingly I thought. In that movie, The Hulk is a transgenic being, a chimera of sorts. Many creatures combined into one.
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His dramatic size changing comes from the fact that he has Sea-Cucumber DNA. You see, Sea Cucumbers can make use of a technique known as molecular sliding. Basically it allows them to unlock the molecules of their muscles and connective tissues, and slide those molecules around into different configurations. Those configurations can include rapid size changing (shrinking or growing) as well as changing their pliability from soft to armored hard (one step towards invulnerability).
This explanation alone isn’t sufficient, it never specifically accounts for how the Hulk is able to vastly increase his mass to almost 2 tons at full size. The rest of the movie gives clues however, such as when Hulk transforms back into Banner near the end.
His body is soaking wet and begins dispersing very large amounts of water and steam. The human body is over 85% water, so perhaps, as he transforms, his body begins using an active cellular osmosis process to absorb ambient moisture from the air to add to his mass. This makes the most sense to me as Banner transforms to his largest sizes when near, or submersed in, large bodies of water.
In Sickness and In Health
The Hulk can’t get sick, ever, it’s physiologically impossible. He can’t be poisoned either. He has VAST regenerative capabilities which mean high resistance to radiation and aging. A gallon of cyanide wouldn’t do anymore harm to him than a gallon of water. I’m now going to try to explain why.
Being a chimera means the Hulk could have the immunities of many critters. He could have immuno-peptides in his blood like a Komodo dragon which totally and instantly annihilate foreign bacteria and viruses. In addition to this he could have the bacterial clotting factor of a Horseshoe Crab. This would cause his blood to clot at the site of a wound, instantly stopping bleeding if bacteria were present and trying to get in.
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A more energetic/electrically active nervous system (maybe due to transgenic electric eel genes) could allow for him to do feats similar to those put forward by Dr. Robert Beck. Beck used electrical energy to kill ALL bacteria and viruses in the body, even HIV is claimed to have been destroyed by his methods.
All of these immune enhancing factors would severely increase Hulk’s rate of healing. After all, having sterilized wounds doubles the healing speed of humans (this is how neosporin and polysporin work actually).
Immunity to poison works a little differently. There is a process called Mithridatism wherein a person gradually exposes themselves to minor amounts of even very powerful poisons and thereby successfully builds, oftentimes total, immunity to said poison. The Hulk having vast regenerative abilities, immuno-abilities, and a quick cellular metabolism could achieve this very quickly. The first snake bite might knock him down, but his body would quickly mithridatise and then he’d regenerate the damage and be good to go from then on. He could also manifest the various poison killing antibodies that different creatures already naturally produce due to his transgenic nature.
Another way of doing it is if he had the more energetic nervous system I talked about earlier. He might generate ozone in his lungs/mouth/nasal cavity/sinuses etc. Ozone is a very powerful toxin binder, able to convert thousands of different toxins into biologically inert materials. He could also combine this with maybe some type of organic activated charcoal filters in his stomach and/or various areas of his bloodstream/digestive system. Activated charcoal is just treated carbon (of which we’re all made of in large amounts), so you can see how this is biologically feasible.
Regenerating a lumbering behemoth is explainable a few more ways too. In his book The Body Electric, Dr. Robert O. Becker (not to be confused with Dr. Robert Beck above) talks about how his team used modulated electrical fields to regenerate scar tissue out of existence, and even regenerate the mammalian limbs of a mouse. Properly controlled, the Hulk’s energetic nervous system could even do this.
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He could also absorb ambient/radiant energies the same way humans do certain frequencies of IR radiation in order to regenerate even faster. These things all coupled together could make him heal at truly remarkable speeds.
Before I forget, more implanted-gene-fun from the first movie. Linkia Starfish can totally regenerate any part of their bodies, and are one of the only species out there that is truly genetically immortal due to using fragmentation to multiply.
Hercules and Achilles, Strength and Invulnerability
Now onto the nitty gritty. I put strength and invulnerability together because they’re correlated, the more durable your muscles are, the stronger they are.
There are many ways Hulk muscles could be achieved in real life. The mutation of the Unbreakable Family, combined with total bone collagen replacement could give Hulk bones rivaling Wolverine’s. Alternatively to the carbon nanotubes in that article, all the collagen in his bones, muscles, connective tissue, and skin could be replaced with another biologically synthesized material…spider silk.
Spider silk has 3 times the tensile strength of Kevlar and is pound for pound 5 times stronger than steel. This would render our Hulkster greatly invulnerable and, due to the strength/durability correlation, titanically strong. This is also plausible as spider silk genes have been engineered into goats so why not humans?
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Another thing to consider is tetanic muscle contraction. Motor neurons pushed beyond their limits to max out at about a 20 fold increase in strength; adrenaline does this. We’ve all heard the tales of 110lb mothers lifting cars off their trapped children, same idea.
Adrenaline is released by anger/panic/fear, so the Hulk’s already godlike strength, multiplied 20 times would be truly awesome. He’d most likely have heightened levels of adrenaline in his system, which combined with greater electrical stimulation on his nerves from eel genes, could make his tetany kicked in at all times.
In normal humans, this would be disastrous. Adrenaline is more poisonous than cyanide and the human body wouldn’t last long under the kind of wear and tear such constant super-strength would cause. Fortunately, Hulk isn’t normal, instantly and totally regenerating would protect him from the side effects.
Transgenically implanting the plant genes for synthesizing Reservatrol could not only vastly increase Hulk’s stamina, but also his health and slow his aging.
To properly write about all encompassing comic-book invulnerability, I’ll have to catalogue a few more ways to resist getting hurt. Here goes:
To greatly aid in the resistance against heat and electricity, the oil producing glands in his skin could be altered to produce a material like Fire Paste or a highly organic one like Starlite.
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If his body rapidly synthesized the anti-freeze found in snow fleas relative to how much his external temperature dropped, it would allow Hulk to function in the coldest environments without protection and without freezing.
Deinococcus Radiodurans
Hulk’s transgenic nature could help him in yet another way. If his cells mimicked those of Deinococcus Radiodurans, it would add many things to his unstoppable nature. D. Radiodurans is able to withstand thousands of times the radiation of normal human cells due to having highly condensed and protected backup copies of its nuclear DNA. This allows it to regenerate its genetic code and bodily structure at high speed.
This same phenomenon of DNA backups would make the Hulk able to reboot his genetic structure at any time to further help him resist poisons, disease, and aging (in the comics, the Hulk has the potential to live for at least hundreds of years at full strength, calling himself Maestro). Couple that with strains of the bacteria that can be healthy and function in temperatures so hot that they would kill a human in seconds, and it would help round out more of his invulnerability.
Many species of bacteria, including D. Radiodurans, go into total hibernation/torpor when it gets too cold. While I’ve covered Hulk’s resistance to the cold above, this ability would help him when things got too cold even for him.
Powering It All or Hulk HUNGRY!
There’s a couple explanations I can think of for the Hulk turning green, one is from the first movie when he turns the same green that Manowar Jellyfish do when they get put under stress. The second one is chlorophyll. It’d take a lot of energy to power a body like his for any length of time and dermal chloroplasts would definitely help the process. This also kinda jibes with the absorbing radiant energy to heal faster cited above.
Pigs can digest cellulose (among other things) for energy that humans can’t and there are strains of D. Radiodurans above that can digest almost everything else. Some gut bacteria like this, and Matter Eater Hulk could eat and digest virtually anything, anywhere, for sustenance.
Conclusion
Well there you have it! My article on The Science of The Incredible Hulk. Thoughts and comments are welcome.
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