What If You Had X-Ray Vision?

WHAT IF

Of all the superpowers, this isn't the one you want to have, trust us.

Transcript

00:00 (music)

00:04 Wouldn't it be cool to see things

00:06 through any wall and any door?

00:08 Oops, sorry.

00:10 (cough)

00:11 How about seeing through your own skin?

00:14 Or your dog?

00:16 No, no, no, and no.

00:20 Of all superpowers out there,

00:22 this isn't the one you want to get your hands on.

00:26 This is WHAT IF,

00:28 and here's what would happen if you had X-ray vision.

00:34 X-rays are light,

00:36 but they have different wavelengths than visible light.

00:39 And that makes them interact with matter differently.

00:43 Basically, they can make some materials partially transparent,

00:46 like human tissue.

00:49 Seeing X-rays wouldn't be anything like what they show in superhero movies,

00:53 not even close.

00:54 Besides, it would require you to have another superpower in your possession.

00:59 Here's why.

01:01 There are very few things on Earth

01:03 that naturally emit enough X-rays to make themselves visible.

01:07 That means you'd have to shoot X-rays from your eyes

01:10 onto the object you want to see through.

01:13 But if you were just running around blasting them in all directions,

01:16 you wouldn't see any difference.

01:19 When you pay a visit to your local hospital emergency room

01:22 to see if you've got anything cracked,

01:24 they place you between a source of X-rays,

01:26 an X-ray machine,

01:28 and something that can detect the emitted X-rays.

01:31 See where I'm going here?

01:33 You can't be a source of X-rays and an X-ray detector at the same time,

01:38 unless you moved very fast and got behind whatever it is you looked at

01:41 just before the X-rays hit it.

01:44 Although they're not the kind of light you can see,

01:46 that doesn't eliminate the fact that X-rays travel at the speed of light.

01:51 That means in order to make use of your X-ray-blasting eyes,

01:55 you'd have to move faster than the speed of light.

01:58 But here's the bummer.

02:00 From what physics has taught us, that's not possible.

02:03 Nothing can outrun the speed of light.

02:06 Let's not give up just yet.

02:08 A quick solution to this problem would be to cooperate with a friend

02:11 who's been granted the same X-ray shooting abilities.

02:14 Your friend would blast X-rays your way,

02:17 and you would detect them,

02:18 and the other way around.

02:21 While you were casually shooting X-rays,

02:23 anyone not wearing a lead outfit in the nearby vicinity

02:26 would be exposed to ionizing radiation.

02:29 That kind of radiation can damage human DNA,

02:32 causing DNA mutations and leading to cancer in later years.

02:37 Maybe you should opt for the ability to detect X-rays and not emit them.

02:42 But again, there aren't too many natural sources of X-rays on Earth.

02:46 If they were the only thing you were able to detect,

02:49 you'd be in almost complete darkness.

02:52 You could look up to the sky to see a faint glow of space radiation,

02:56 mostly blocked out by the Earth's atmosphere.

02:59 The only things you'd really be able to see through would all be man-made.

03:03 You could start hanging out at a hospital's X-ray department.

03:06 When that gets boring, you could move on to particle accelerators

03:09 like the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

03:12 But that's about all the fun you'd have.

03:15 Neither our bodies nor the environment we live in

03:18 are suited to this superpower.

03:20 Your eyes can process about 10 million colors within a visible spectrum,

03:25 anything between ultraviolet light and red light.

03:28 With over 2 million working parts,

03:30 our eyes are the second most complex organ, behind only our brain.

03:35 They generally outperform X-ray vision.

03:38 So leave the X-ray vision to Superman,

03:41 and stick with red capes and make-believe for now.

03:44 At least, until cancer is no longer a problem for humanity.

03:48 But that's a story for another WHAT IF.

03:52 [music]

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