Time Travel and Superpower Inducing Lab Accidents at Comic-Con San Diego

For the fourth year in a row, the Fleet has brought our own special blend of comic book fantasy with science reality to the San Diego Comic-Con. This year is no different, as we're excited to host two panels for the weekend event, featuring a mix of writers and scientists to explore the fiction and reality of science in movies and comic books.  

Our first panel is entitled, "From OSHA Violation to Superhero: The Lab Accidents That Will Most Likely Give You Superpowers." We'll explore the comic book phenomenon of lab accidents leading to superhero powers. The panel will discuss the strange dynamics of lab accidents, how often they happen in real life, the potential effects and the wildest, scariest or most serendipitous accidents our panelists have been involved with. Panelists include Robin Gunn, PhD, senior scientist and project manager at Structure Based Design; Sierra Simpson, PhD candidate in molecular neuroscience at Scripps Research; Michelle Nolasco, PhD, technical communications at Agena Bioscience; Alexander Battey, PhD candidate in plasma physics at Columbia University; Todd Maxwell, radiation safety officer at Scripps Research and Dina Zangwill, research assistant at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

The second panel is "Time Travel in the Quantum Realm." Movies make time travel look easy. All it takes is a flux capacitor or some Stark Industries ingenuity and you should be able to safely zip back a few decades, right? Not quite. We'll bring together a panel of writers and scientists to talk about how time travel and the quantum realm could be more accurately portrayed in fiction, and how close we really are to making it a reality. Panelists include Christopher Markus, writer and co-producer of Avengers: Endgame; Elizabeth Simmons, PhD, physicist and executive vice chancellor of academic affairs at UC San Diego; Eric Michelsen, PhD, physicist and lecturer at UC San Diego; Kim Griest, PhD, physicist and professor emeritus at US San Diego and Clifford Johnson, PhD, professor of physics at the University of Southern California. The big question is: what would you do with your time machine?

Both panels are available to Comic-Con pass holders. See the San Diego Comic-Con program guide for details on date, time and room number.

https://www.comic-con.org/