In an effort to crush the dreams of children (and young-at-heart adults) everywhere, researchers from the University of Cambridge have determined that Spider-Man-style wall crawling is not humanly possible.
According to the researchers, it's not feasible for animals larger than geckos to crawl on walls because their hands and feet are not large enough to support the weight of their bodies while climbing.
Apparently, humans would need to cover 40% of their bodies with sticky pads in order to scale buildings like Peter Parker, which doesn't sound anywhere near as user-friendly (or awesome).
There's still hope, though, with the researchers suggesting an eventual solution involving stickier pads made from flexible synthetic adhesives, based on evolutionary evidence of frogs making their own pads stickier. That said, they've admitted that kind of thing is quite a while off.
Personally, I think we can disregard all of this research as none of it seems to involve getting bitten by a radioactive spider or *shudder* secret DNA experiments. Nice try, science!
- The techradar guide to the 15 best superhero films of all time
