Scientists at Cambridge University have, according to Steven Colbert, “written a PhD thesis on destroying [his] childhood.” The study, “Why Spider-Man can’t exist: Geckos are ‘size limit’ for sticking to walls,’” says it all: it debunks the fantasy that humans could ever scale a wall like Spider-Man. Colbert’s despair was assuaged by a rebuttal filmed by engineers at Stanford University who, in fact, designed a gecko-inspired adhesive glove and awkwardly scaled a wall, albeit painfully slowly. Spi-der-man…Spi-der-man…Does what-ever…a spi-der can…

Colbert’s segment can be streamed below:

The Stanford rebuttal to the Cambridge study can be streamed below:

On the other hand, Stanford has been inspired by geckos and posted their research findings about six ant-sized robots with adhesive feet pulling the weight of a car.

To fuel all our fantasies, the new SPIDER-MAN movie will be released next summer on July 17.