The particles of a dew drop and the masses of a planet are moulded and controlled by the same force. - Sir William Withey Gull
Greetings, fellow Bohron.
Have you ever wondered what would happen if we could alter our size? What if we could shrink to the size of an ant or be a giant man the size of a plane? Well, if you have watched Ant-man in any marvel movie, I’m sure you did. Science fiction shown in movies is always inspired by reality. So what’s real in this case? Let’s find out.
Comics and Movies
In both comic books and movies, ant man can do it with the help of Pym particles.
Pym particles are subatomic particles that can increase or reduce mass as well as density and strength.
His suit helps in this process of bombardment with the Pym particles. According to comics, the Pym particles work by shunting matter into the Kosmos Dimension when shrinking a subject or accruing extra matter from that dimension when enlarging them.
According to movies, the Pym particles shrink down or enlarge the size of atoms. To sum up all this, in movies and comics, the ant-man bombards himself with Pym field, which is created by the Pym particles in his suit. More contact with this field means more mass and size gained, less contact means less mass and size.
So when he wants to shrink to the size of an ant, he makes less contact with it, and when he needs to be a giant man, he increases his contact with that field, and thus gains more mass and size. The density remains the same as the size and mass, both are altered.
But all of this is not possible in real life. So let’s be a bit realistic.
The Real Science
The closest realistic particle to the Pym particle is the Higgs Boson.
Higgs boson, discovered at the CERN in 2012, is the particle that gives all other fundamental particles mass, according to the standard model of particle physics.
This particle, Higgs Boson, makes a field and every existing matter/antimatter in the universe passes through it to gain mass. All the fundamental particles gain mass from this field. That’s why it is said that matter always has some mass/weight.
So this field is the same as the Pym field. The Pym field alters the mass as well as the size of the particle, but the Higgs field only alters the mass. This Pym field can be controlled by the suit and ant-man can manage his contact with this field.
● More contact with the field - Giant man
● Less Contact with field - Ant-Man
But the problem is that our particle doesn’t change the size of the matter. So our density will not remain the same. Suppose if an object made contact with the Higgs Boson field and increased its weight, it would only gain mass and its density would also increase. That would be nothing like Ant-Man.
Conclusion
That’s why the concept of Ant-man is still fictional. There are still many decades left till we see something like that in real life. Even if we find a field that can alter the size, still using that on living beings will take a lot of experiments. Who knows what lies in the future? We can just question the present. Be curious. Question everything.