Virtuous Con's Superhero Science panel asks Raven Baxter how superheroes breathe in space

Raven Baxter joined the Superhero Science panel at Virtuous Con on June 20, 2021, using comic book films to teach biology and chemistry to fans. The online panel opened a summer and fall of talks that ended on October 14 with a fireside chat at Johns Hopkins University.

The first question went to Baxter. How can Superman or Captain Marvel breathe in space, the host asked, if space is a vacuum?

"I'm a molecular biologist, so I study molecules," Baxter said. "But as far as my understanding of human biology, we need our air at a certain pressure. We need a certain composition of molecules in the air to breathe."

The panel met on Juneteenth weekend, three days after President Biden signed the law making Juneteenth a federal holiday. Virtuous Con's Juneteenth edition ran June 19 and 20.

Breathing, muscle and lab results

"Considering that space is a vacuum, which is essentially like the absence of most of the molecules that we need, I don't know how these folks are breathing, to be honest with you," Baxter said. "Some of the stuff that we're seeing, it's like, don't try this at home."

"The short answer, they're not," she said.

Baxter and the panel laugh after her answer on breathing in space. Image: Virtuous Con video

Dr. Raychelle Burks, a chemist, built on the answer. "I know Raven will agree with me, on a molecular level, right?" Burks said. "I mean, really what breathing is for is to get oxygen in. And she's absolutely right."

Later the panel turned to the heart-shaped herb in Black Panther. The host asked what would have to happen inside the body for a person to lift three times their body weight.

"I'm guessing that you'd need more muscle cells. I think they're called myocytes," Baxter said. The extra cells would be needed "to be able to make up for that extra capacity to do work, so literally more muscular tissue."

Baxter explains what superhuman strength would take at the cellular level. Image: Virtuous Con video

Near the close, each panelist named the movie science that bothers them most. Baxter picked films where lab results arrive in a single scene. "It's never that quick," she said. Real research, she told viewers, means writing grants and waiting for approvals.

The host, Karama Horne, introduced Baxter as an entertainer and content creator "known for her unique style of combining science and music that teaches and empowers those in STEM and beyond." The sign-off pointed viewers to her science music and her COVID-19 safety videos, which it called "hilarious." Biologist Dr. Danielle N. Lee and science teacher Lali DeRosier completed the panel.

A convention for BIPOC creators

Virtuous Con describes itself as "an online sci-fi and comic culture convention that celebrates the excellence of BIPOC creators in speculative fiction." It launched in October 2020. Its founder, national bestselling author Cerece Rennie Murphy, received the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association's Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award. Past guests include actor Anika Noni Rose and author Tananarive Due, according to its about page.

Careers, mentoring and communication

Baxter's other sessions that season went to graduate students, postdocs and early-career scientists. That summer, on July 15, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy's first advisory called health misinformation an "urgent threat" and said "we can and must confront it together."

On August 7, she spoke on the Careers Panel at ComSciCon-Flagship 2021, the ninth annual national workshop, with Dr. Jeff Preston, Robert Nguyen Ulrich and Dr. Phil De Luna. Graduate students at Harvard, MIT and the University of Colorado Boulder founded ComSciCon in 2012. Nearly 3,000 graduate students have taken part, according to its website.

On August 13, she moderated the plenary at #DivSch21, the DiverseScholar postdoctoral conference, which brought together a diverse group of postdocs and doctoral students for professional development and networking. Lee gave the talk, on the history and future of the #BLACKandSTEM online community. A month later, Baxter's antibody rap answered Nicki Minaj's vaccine tweet.

On October 13, she spoke in a skills session on communicating research to diverse audiences at the Alzheimer's Association's Neuroscience Next. The free online meeting for students and early-career researchers began in 2020. That June, the FDA had granted accelerated approval to aducanumab, a disputed Alzheimer's drug.

The next day she was the guest at a fireside chat for PHutures, the PhD and postdoc career hub Johns Hopkins launched in 2020. "We're hoping that a conversation with Dr. Baxter will introduce audience members to new and avant-garde approaches to communicating scientific disciplines and their value to a broad public," Dr. Christine Kelly, associate director of PHutures, said in a Johns Hopkins announcement.

Baxter, a molecular biologist and science communicator, had defended her dissertation at the University at Buffalo that June. In July she became director of diversity initiatives at UC Irvine's School of Biological Sciences.

Virtuous Con posted the full 45-minute Superhero Science panel on its YouTube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAb61pKbjWA