Is a Gas Human Scientifically Possible? The Molecular Barrier, the Choice Between Invisible and Toxic, and the Fate of Consciousness

The drama is introduced as a completely original story based on the 1960 tokusatsu film The Human Vapor. In the original film, a man named Mizuno becomes the subject of a human experiment and ends up gaining the ability to turn into gas. According to the video, the drama keeps the same core premise: a human can turn into gas at will.

At this point, the video asks what it would scientifically mean for a human to become gas, and points out that a major problem lies hidden there.

About 60% of the human body is water, but the rest is made of proteins, lipids, bone, and so on. Put simply, for a human to become gas, everything, including solid bone and proteins, would have to be turned into a gas. The video explains that this is where we hit a fatal barrier.

Most substances are made of molecules, which are formed by atoms bonded together. Some molecules are small, like water, which consists of three atoms: two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Others are enormous, like proteins, which consist of thousands to tens of thousands of atoms. Two kinds of forces act on molecules: the forces that bind atoms together within a molecule, and the forces that hold molecules to one another.

When water boils and becomes steam, only the latter, the forces between molecules, are broken. The state in which the attraction between molecules is severed and water molecules exist separately is what we generally call a gas. With large molecules like proteins, however, if you keep adding energy to break the forces between molecules, the forces holding the molecule itself together give way first.

The video compares this to building-block toys. A small piece made of two or three blocks won't break even if you toss it, but a large castle made of thousands or tens of thousands of blocks falls apart the moment you apply force to lift it, as the blocks come loose from one another. Try to turn a protein into a gas, and the molecule itself breaks apart in the same way. For this reason, the video says that turning the complex molecules that make up the human body into a gas intact may be difficult within the framework of modern physics and chemistry, and that the instant the body gasified, it would break down into a collection of small molecules that would no longer be a human, or even a living thing.

The video does, however, note that the Gas Human in the series is depicted much like smoke, and offers an alternative interpretation: perhaps the substances making up the body are floating in the air as fine, mist- or smoke-like particles while keeping their cellular and molecular structure. In technical terms, such a state is called an aerosol. The video speculates that it might actually be not a Gas Human but an "Aerosol Human."

Next, the video considers what would happen if the test subject were turned into a Gas Human. Most of the gases around us are colorless and transparent. Air, carbon dioxide, and methane, of course, but even water vapor is inherently invisible to the human eye. You might think you can see steam, but the video explains that this, too, is an aerosol state in which fine droplets of water float in the air. So becoming a Gas Human would, basically, mean becoming an invisible human.

But light passing through your body also means you can't see anything yourself. To see objects, the retina at the back of the eye has to catch light, but if your whole body is transparent and light passes straight through, your retinas can't catch it either. The video adds that, at least for a film or TV production, this would be a bit of a problem.

On the other hand, colored gases do exist. Chlorine, used as a poison gas in World War I, is pale yellow-green, and nitrogen dioxide, one of the indicators of air pollution, is reddish-brown. According to the video, it is no coincidence that many colored gases are toxic.

A gas having color means that electrons in its molecules are absorbing part of the visible light. Being able to absorb low-energy light means the electrons can move with little energy, which tends to make the substance prone to chemical reactions. In other words, it also tends to react with and damage living tissue. The video says that if someone inhaled a Gas Human, they might suffer chemical burns to their lungs.

From this reasoning, the video concludes that the Gas Human is forced into a cruel choice: remain harmless but transparent and invisible to everyone, or be visible at the cost of being highly toxic. The assessment is that, for anyone other than a person harboring intense resentment, it's not a particularly appealing ability.

So, is there any way to stop a Gas Human that has set out to take revenge? If it can get in anywhere by slipping through tiny gaps that common sense says are impassable, such as the gap under a door, a keyhole, or a vent, then physical security like doors and locks is almost meaningless.

Even so, the video says there are weaknesses. One is combustion. The elements that make up the human body are mostly oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen, and many gases containing them, such as methane and ammonia, are flammable. If it were an aerosol, it would be even more dangerous. A state in which countless fine particles of organic matter float in the air like mist resembles a fuel-air explosive, a military weapon. Ignite it in this state and, unlike with a solid mass, every particle reacts with oxygen at once and burns explosively. The video's take is that a single flame would make the body explode.

The other method is the opposite: cooling. If a gas is cooled enough, it no longer has enough energy to overcome the attraction between molecules, and it turns back into a liquid or solid. The video suggests that if you were serious about stopping it, you could prepare a huge liquid nitrogen tank and a device to spray it over a wide area, and release it into the room the moment the Gas Human enters. The Gas Human should then fall out of the air as frozen particles, and a being that can't be locked in a cell might instead be sentenced to being frozen in pieces.

Toward the end, the video moves from questions of physics to the question of consciousness. Whether gas or aerosol, the Gas Human's body should, in principle, be scattered into pieces. Where, then, is its consciousness?

According to the video, modern neuroscience holds that consciousness arises from the electrical and chemical activity of neurons, the nerve cells of the brain. Each neuron is connected to thousands to tens of thousands of other neurons at junctions called synapses, and this complex pattern of connections is thought to be important for consciousness. Becoming a Gas Human would destroy all of it. The video asks whether, once the connections between pieces of matter are lost, consciousness, or even basic thought, would be possible at all.

Turning back from gas into a human poses a further problem. Humans think of what lies inside their skin as themselves, and live with the sense that there is a clear boundary between themselves and the world around them. A Gas Human can freely remove that boundary, scatter, and then gather again to re-form itself. So when it scatters and reassembles, can a being that once let go of its consciousness be said to be the same self? The video frames this as the ultimate form of the philosophical thought experiment known as the "Ship of Theseus."

The video goes on to say that it isn't only the body that comes apart: time spent with loved ones, words exchanged, dreams shared, and bonds that truly existed might all vanish along with it. Is the being before becoming a Gas Human truly the same as the one after? Even after being torn apart, could it remember what those people did for it?

Having posed these questions, the video concludes that the Gas Human may be not just a thriller or suspense story, but a being that confronts us with fundamental questions humanity has been asking for thousands of years: what it means to be human, what the self is, and what our connections with other people are.