Where Are the Shrinking Rays We Were Promised?
It's been 35 years since Rick Moranis accidentally made his children a quarter-inch tall. So honey, why the hell are our kids still normal-sized?
This year marks the 35th anniversary of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, a quasi-horror flick (it came from the guys who made Re-Animator after all) dressed as a family-friendly comedy (it was bankrolled by Disney and came dangerously close to being called Teenie Weenies). It still holds up for various reasons, but mostly because of how it made shrinking technology seem so…plausible.
From the radioactive rain in The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) to the never-actually-explained shrinking tech in Fantastic Voyage (1966)—the guy with all the answers to how it worked was in a coma—movies about shrinking people have tended to fall back on “Because we said so, that's why” science.
But Honey I Shrunk the Kids was different. We left the theaters thinking, “This is going to happen. We’re just years away from being able to shrink our kids, or ourselves.”
Well, it’s been thirty-five years now, and I don’t have to tell you: NOBODY IS BEING SHRUNK. So, what the hell happened? Is shrinking technology ever going to catch up to our imaginations? Or is it as hopeless as a Honey I Shrunk the Kids reboot?
I got some answers, because I am very good at journalisming.
Why has science failed to build a working electromagnetic shrinking machine?
You’re of course referring to the invention by Dr. Wayne Szalinski, the bumbling physicist played by Rick Moranis in the 1989 movie Honey I Shrunk the Kids. The answer for that is pretty simple. It was a movie. Everything in it was made up.
Yes, smartass, we know that. But Szalinski seemed like he knew what he was talking about. His shrink ray was based on science.
Was it really?
It made so much sense. Something about reducing empty space or, um...
His exact wording, as he explained to a group of scientists in one of the movie’s opening scenes, was this: “All matter is made up of not only density but of empty space, and if we can proportionally reduce the amount of empty space in any given object, we can, thereby, shrink the object.”
That’s it!
It does sound impressive.
It’s super science-y!
I should point out that right after he said this, he also made this dubious claim: “When Einstein came up with the atomic bomb, did they ask him to prove that it worked?”
Okay, fine.
So maybe he’s not the most reliable narrator when it comes to hard science.
Whatever. Our question is, why aren’t we able to shrink people yet? What’s the hold-up?
Let’s start with the Honey I Shrunk the Kids hypothesis. Dr. Szalinski's approach to shrinking came down to reducing the empty space and pushing the atoms closer together. That doesn't really hold up to scrutiny, says James Kakalios, a University of Minnesota physics professor and the author of The Physics of Superheroes.
“Density is mass divided by volume,” he says. “Shrinking the empty space means making the volume smaller, which would make the density larger. So, this is not working.”
All atoms are roughly the same size, with the same number of protons in their nucleus and orbiting electrons. “If you shrink the empty space, you are pulling the electrons closer to each other,” Kakalios explains. “And the electrons will repel and resist this.”
So that’s it then? There’s no other hypothetical option?
If we’re speaking hypothetically, sure, there’s another option. Two other options, actually. You could remove some of the atoms or make the atoms themselves smaller.
Which one is more likely?
Let’s start with the first one. “Removing atoms—assuming you have some place to store them and can get them back when you wish to return to normal size—is impractical,” says Kakalios.
To go from six feet tall to a quarter of an inch would require removing around 24 million atoms for every atom that you keep. With the average cell in your body comprising approximately 50 billion atoms, “one would have to be very judicious in which atoms you removed from each cell, in order to maintain its functionality,” says Kakalios.
What about making the atoms smaller?
Spyridon Michalakis, a quantum physicist at Caltech, tackled this problem when he served as science adviser for the 2015 Ant-Man movie starring Paul Rudd.
Technically atoms don’t shrink; the distance between the protons and neutrons in the nucleus and the orbiting electrons are fixed. But you could “substitute heavier, negatively charged elementary particles, such as muons, in place of electrons,” he says. “Such atoms have much smaller size.”
Muonic atoms are up to two hundred times smaller than regular atoms, so “if we could convert regular atoms into their muonic cousins and keep them stable via some type of relativistic mechanism, we would shrink a human to the size of a tiny action figure,” Michalakis says.
Problem solved! Bring on the shrinking rays!
Not so fast. We’re still a long way from that happening.
“Only recently have physicists started looking into muon-to-electron conversion, let alone electron-to-muon conversion,” Michalakis points out. It’s in the realm of possibility, but at least for the moment it’s “exotic physics I hope to see future generations wrestle with,” says Michalakis.
Damn.
And that’s not even the bad news. Let’s say somebody figured out electron-to-muon conversion and managed to shrink a person's atoms. It's not like their new reality as a Lilliputian would be care-free.
Well sure. They've got to look out for gigantic ants and lawn sprinklers.
No, I’m talking about the biological changes that come with being suddenly a quarter-inch tall. Michael LaBarbera, a (now retired) professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago, detailed the extreme physiological consequences of shrinking a person in his 2006 essay “The Biology of B-Movie Monsters.”
Because a recently shrunk person’s diminutive size would boost his metabolic rate, “he’ll probably have to eat his own weight daily just to stay alive,” wrote LaBarbera. He'll also have to give up sleeping in order to “eat 24 hours a day or risk starving before he wakes up in the morning (unless he can learn the trick used by hummingbirds of lowering their body temperatures while they sleep).”
That doesn’t sound so bad.
Wait, I’m not done. Rhett Allain, a professor of Physics at Southeastern Louisiana University, warns that if you get small enough, there could be problems with breathing. “Humans breathe through their lungs, but that might not work with air that is now proportionally bigger,” he says.
And because our ability to recognize wavelengths of light and the frequencies of sound are dependent on the size of our biological sensors—cones and rods in the retina, and the basilar membrane in the inner ear—Michalakis warns that “if you shrink beyond a certain size, you become blind and deaf to those colors and sounds.”
So what you’re saying is, give up hope? Our fantasies of a working shrink ray are just a pipe dream?
Not necessarily. There’ve been some amazing advances in shrinking objects to nanoscale. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology revealed in 2018 that they’d developed a miniaturizing technology called “implosion fabrication” that could take a simple structure made from absorbent gel—similar to writing with a 3D pen, but with a substance commonly used in disposable baby diapers—and reduce it to one-1,000th of its original size.
Yeah, that’s pretty cool, but…
This is a big deal. It’s something that’s been on the horizon since Nobel prize winner Richard Feynman, who’s considered the father of modern nanotechnology, gave his historic “There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom” lecture at an American Physical Society meeting in 1959. He was the guy who argued that we could manipulate matter at an atomic and molecular level, and in doing so “write the entire 24 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica on the head of a pin.” And now there’s science, sixty-five years later, where we can create a polymer scaffold with a laser that can have applications in everything from optics to medicine to robotics.
That’s great and all, but… can I shrink my kids?
Um… no, sorry. Neuroengineer Ed Boyden, who helped lead the research at MIT, told me that “we can only shrink things we printed. We can’t shrink things that we haven't printed.” In other words, no, not your kids. Or yourself.
This is bullshit!
I understand your frustration. But there are shrinking prospects beyond what can be duplicated in a laboratory.
Like what?
Well, like you could move to Flores, an island in Indonesia.
Why would I do that?
Because it’s inhabited by Rampasasa pygmies, whose average height is 4’7”. For years, we assumed they had an ancestral connection to Homo floresiensis, a Hobbit-like ancient hominin that stood about three feet high and last walked the earth about 17,000 years ago.
Makes sense.
But then last year some researchers went to the island and sequenced the DNA on the Rampasasa. It turns out, the modern pygmies aren’t related at all to H. floresiensis. All the theories about inbreeding being the reason they're so short is a bunch of bunk.
So?
“What’s interesting about Flores,” says Joshua Akey, a Princeton professor who co-authored the study, “is that it’s the only known place where two independent instances of short-statured hominins evolved, modern humans and Homo floresiensis.” It’s even happened to elephants, who arrived in Flores from Southeast Asia as regular-sized elephants and evolved into dwarves.
There are tiny elephants on Flores?
Not anymore, they went extinct 840,000 years ago. But that's three examples of tiny, unrelated animals on the same 5,000 square mile land mass. As Princeton geneticist and the study’s co-author Joshua Akey concluded, “Flores is a magical place where things go and get small.”
Why is this happening? It’s not magic, obviously.
No, of course not. The phenomenon isn’t entirely understood, says Avery. “I suspect there are many different ecological factors and molecular mechanisms that could push a species to be smaller or larger.” One theory is called insular dwarfism. When mainland animals end up on an island with limited resources, it serves as a sort of “evolutionary ‘toggle switch’,” the study authors write, in which smaller bodies with less dietary needs are more predisposed to survive.
Great! So I just move my family to Flores and…
Hold on. This isn't an overnight shrinking fix.
Akey estimates that if a small population of average-sized humans were dropped on the island of Flores, “depending on how strong the selective pressure was for ‘shrinking’, you could potentially see large changes in the range of hundreds of generations.”
Hundreds? That hardly seems worth it.
Exactly. A remake of Honey I Shrunk the Kids using this method would have to be called Honey I Shrunk the Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandkids.
No way Rick Moranis is going to star in that.
It may make for a crappy movie premise, but some non-island dwellers believe that creating a shorter populace just might be in the cards, especially if we’re concerned about climate change.
Wait, what?
NYU bioethicist Matthew Liao has argued that reducing the average US height by just under six inches “would mitigate or adapt to climate change.” The smaller we are, the less we consume, and the less we consume, the smaller our ecological footprint.
We’d also live longer—“How many centenarians… are six feet tall?” he asks—and reduce our risk for cancer and cardiovascular illnesses. “Moreover,” he adds, “as we prepare for the human exploration of Mars and other planets, it seems likely that height restriction on astronauts will be considered, given not only the cost of fuel but also the resources needed to sustain these individuals.”
We need to shrink so we can go to Mars? That’s… weirder than anything in Honey I Shrunk the Kids.
Indeed. But don’t tell that to Donald Platt, the founder and president of Micro Aerospace Solutions in Melbourne, Florida.
“I have looked at a scientific basis for ‘shrinking’ for over a decade,” he says, as a way of hastening space exploration by limiting the constraints of size.
“I believe that we could make many organisms smaller by genetically modulating several biological pathways,” Platt explains. “Specifically, the insulin growth factor receptor and growth hormone receptor pathway.” There have been breakthroughs in size bioengineering, but mostly in animals and often in the wrong direction, like a 2015 study that significantly increased the size of carpenter ants by modifying their DNA.
What if I want to shrink myself or my kids but not to prepare us for living in a Mars colony?
You’re in luck! Arne Hendriks, a Dutch artist and researcher, has for several years been working on a research project called The Incredible Shrinking Man, which explores, as Hendriks explained to me, “the possibility to shrink the human species to better fit the Earth.” Or more specifically, to shrink us to about twenty inches.
Why twenty inches?
He picked that size because it's “the average size of a newborn baby, so we’re familiar with it,” he says.
This is madness.
Maybe, but his intentions are earnest. Hendriks—who, at 6’ 4”, isn't exactly short himself—says that “Smaller people need less of everything. A 50-centimeter person would only need two to 10% of what an average person needs today.”
And how does he suggest we all shrink down to a foot and a half?
Well, that’s where it gets tricky. “Height is the outcome of a lot of different aspects,” Hendriks says. “Heritage, environment, food, desire. People have grown a lot taller, and we accept this because there is a preference for tallness within our culture. On the other hand, if you suggest we should perhaps become a little smaller, if even just a few inches, people think you’re mad. To me that shows a clear prejudice towards smallness.”
I don’t understand what any of that means.
It’s okay, neither do I. The point is, being small might be the future. Even if you don’t want it. A 2013 study from economists at USC, Harvard, and Peking University looked at how—and more importantly, why—we shrink as we age, and they found some pretty fascinating things. Men on average shrink 1.3 inches with advanced age, and women lose about an inch and a half. And it’s not just gender; some of our lifestyle choices affect how much height slips away.
Like what?
People who live in cities shrink less than people who prefer country-living. Being illiterate can cost you 0.9 of an inch, and completing a high school education could save you from losing a full centimeter.
None of this is the kind of shrinking I was talking about.
I know.
This is Honey, Grandma Shrunk a Centimeter or Two Because She Lives in the Country and Doesn’t Read. I mean…
I get it. The reality is, we just can't shrink people like they do in the movies. It’s not like a flying Iron Man suit, says Allain, in which “we have some ideas how it would work but it's just super hard to do. It’s currently theoretically impossible to shrink people.”
But he only says “currently” because, well, science has a way of surprising us.
“We still don’t know everything,” Allain admits.