It’s Official: You Can’t Be Spider-Man

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Just in case you were still holding out hope on a potential career as a web slinging wall climber, the researchers at the University of Cambridge have discovered a reason to stay in school or keep your day job. They have confirmed that humans far exceed the size limit for sticking to walls with their skin, with geckos being the largest animals with potential for such an ability.

In case you needed more of a reason to turn off the Google Alert for “radioactive spiders in my area,” the study reported by EurekAlert! gives a more detailed reason as to why a real life Peter Parker would be just another dude with sticky hands.

The researchers found that the human body would need to have 40% of their body surface covered in adhesive pads in order to climb up vertical walls. In other words, even with gecko-like sticky hand and footpads, the human body would still not be able to achieve such a feat.

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“If a human, for example, wanted to walk up a wall the way a gecko does, we’d need impractically large sticky feet – our shoes would need to be a European size 145 or a US size 114,” says Walter Federle, senior author also from Cambridge’s Department of Zoology.

While there is the possibility of science creating an adhesive strong enough to allow a human to stick to a wall, since trend states that larger animals overcome climbing hardships by simply becoming stickier, there’s a decent chance that once you touch that wall, it’s till death do you part.

Although the researchers at the University of Cambridge may have killed your childhood dream of becoming Spider-Man, there’s always hope in becoming another hero. Depending on whether or not you have billions of dollars to burn that is.

Now that real research has been done as to the possibility of a real Spider-Man, let’s hope no one douses themselves in Gamma radiation to give the Hulk a try.

[button link=”http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/18/science-rules-out-real-spider-man/” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: Engadget[/button]
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