The Physics of Superheroes: Spectacular Second Edition

by Kakalios, James

  Fig. 43. Physics Professor Ray Palmer discovers the white-dwarf-star fragment that will turn out to be the key missing ingredient in his miniaturization device and eventually lead to his moonlighting as the superhero the Atom (from Showcase # 34). © 1961 National Periodical Publications, Inc. (DC)

  Ray’s reasoning here is sound. When a low-mass star of a certain size has exhausted most of its elemental fuel, the energy released by fusion reactions is insufficient to counteract the gravitational pull of the star’s core. The large force at the center of the star leads to a massive compression, until its density is three million grams per cubic centimeter, in which case we call the remnant a white dwarf. The pull of gravity on the remaining core of a white dwarf star is so great that only a cataclysmic explosion would generate sufficient energy to enable a small chunk of the core to break away from the rest of the star and float through space. Some astrophysicists have suggested that white-dwarf collisions occur roughly once a month.

  As Ray reminds himself while struggling with the meteor fragment, the rock he is holding is heavy because it is composed of “degenerate” matter. The electrons are termed “degenerate” because they are all in the lowest energy quantum states, unlike in a normal star, where the electrons would be distributed over many quantum states, some at higher energies. The interior of the white dwarf is composed of carbon and oxygen nuclei and a sea of electrons packed as closely as they can be. The core of white dwarfs cannot be easily compressed further, for all the electrons are already in the lowest possible energy state. This is what Ray means when, as he nears his car, he thinks to himself that white-dwarf stars are composed of “degenerate matter from which the electrons have been stripped, greatly compressing them.” The electrons are still in there, but are not associated with any particular atomic ions.

  Ray is certainly correct that this “degeneracy” is why the white-dwarf star is so dense. The rock Ray is carrying appears to have a radius of 6 inches. Assuming a spherical white-dwarf fragment, the volume would be (4π/3)× (radius)3. In this case the volume of the rock is (4π/3) × (6 inches)3 = 905 inches3—equivalent to nearly 15,000 cm3 since 1 inch equals 2.54 centimeters. To find the mass of the rock we multiply the density of white-dwarf-star matter (3 million grams/cm3) by this volume (15,000 cm3), which gives us 45 billion grams, equal to 45 million kilograms. Converting this mass to weight, we multiply the mass by the acceleration due to gravity (W= mg), and find that the meteorite in fig. 43 weighs one hundred million pounds. No wonder Prof. Palmer, physics professor at Ivy University, is huffing and puffing as he struggles with his find—that little rock weighs 50,000 tons!

  But it turns out that this is, technically, not actually a blooper. Despite appearances, there is nothing wrong with the scene depicted in fig. 43. And that is because we physics professors are Just. That. Strong. Remember this the next time you’re tempted to kick sand in someone’s face at the beach. You never know if that seemingly ninety-eight-pound weakling actually has an advanced degree in physics.

  AFTERWORD-

  LO, THERE SHALL BE AN ENDING!

  IT SHOULD COME AS NO SURPRISE that comic books and physics make a good match; after all, the fun underlying science is not so different from that of a good superhero comic-book story. In both situations either the scientist or the comic-book reader (in some cases they may be one and the same) are presented with a set of rules to be applied in novel, challenging situations. The rules may be Maxwell’s equations of electricity and magnetism and Schrödinger’s equation, and the challenging problem may be to develop a semiconductor analog of a vacuum tube. Alternatively, the rules may be that our hero can run at superspeed and has an aura that protects him from the adverse effects of air drag and electromagnetic induction, and the challenge would be that he has to capture a villain armed with a freeze gun capable of icing up any surface, while recovering the stolen bank funds and without harming any innocent bystanders. In both situations the trick is to find a solution that employs the known rules in a new way (if an old solution would work, we’d just use that), without doing anything that is deemed impossible under these guidelines. We can’t design a transistor device that, in order to function, requires electrons to split into two halves or be attracted toward each other without an intervening positive charge, because the basic unit of negative charge has never been observed to behave in this fashion. Similarly, a Flash comic-book story featuring the Scarlet Speedster defeating Captain Cold by shooting heat beams from his eyes would be unsatisfying, as this is not an ability that the Flash has ever possessed.

  The goal of basic scientific research is to elucidate the fundamental laws of nature, and the highest accomplishment is the discovery of a new rule or principle. Equally good is the clear demonstration of a violation in a preexisting rule, for new physics is discovered when we understand under what circumstances the old rules do not apply. Similarly, there are times when an established comic-book character suddenly acquires a previously unsuspected ability, such as when Sue Storm of the Fantastic Four discovered in Fantastic Four # 22 that the cosmic-ray bombardment that gave her the power of invisibility had also bestowed upon her the ability to generate “invisible force fields.”88 The dynamics between Sue and her teammates were radically altered following the discovery of this new superpower, and over the years, she would learn to generate her force fields in an offensive as well as defensive capability.

  But such cases are rare both in comic books and in real-world physics. There is, however, an unending stream of exciting and challenging problems in physics, just as there is an unlimited source of engaging comic-book stories waiting to be told. The two central ingredients are the same for both science and comic books: an understanding of the basic rules of the game and a fertile imagination.

  Scientists don’t typically consult comic books when selecting research topics (funding agencies tend to frown on grant proposals that contain too many citations to superheroes), but the spirit of “What if . . .” or “What would happen when . . .” infuses both the best scientific research and comic-book adventures. To be sure, there are times when comic books and science fiction anticipate scientific discoveries, just as cutting edge research is occasionally employed as the springboard for superhero adventures (as in the aforementioned JLA # 19).

  Sometimes it takes a while for the science to catch up with the comic books. As an example, consider the magician Abra Kadabra, a Flash villain who has plagued the Scarlet Speedster from nearly the beginning of his crime-fighting career. Garbed in the conventional stage magician’s attire of eveningwear and a top hat, he would use his “magic” to bedevil the Viceroy of Velocity, such as the time he turned him into a human marionette. However, it was revealed that Abra Kadabra was a scientist from the far future and that his “magic” in the twentieth century was actually sixty-fourth-century technology.89 The creators of the Flash comics clearly subscribe to the notion that our present-day science and engineering would appear to be supernatural to those in the distant past. After all, imagine the reaction you’d receive if you could travel one thousand years into the past and display just a fraction of the appliances found in a modern home (assuming you also brought a power supply with you).

  It was left deliberately vague in the Silver Age story as to how sixty-fourth-century science could transform someone into a living puppet. The “explanation” would have to wait until the late 1990s, where Kadabra informs us that he employed nanotechnology to restructure the Flash at the molecular level, demonstrating once again the trouble that a crooked ex-scientist can cause. Certainly nanometer-scale machines cannot transform people into marionettes, but who’s to say what can and can’t be done in another few thousand years, provided it doesn’t involve a violation of established physics.

  In fairness, however, the predictive ability of speculative fiction sometimes gets the technological aspects right, but widely miss other revolutions that have transformed our society. Consider, for example, the 1965 television program Lost in Space. This
popular TV show envisioned a trip to the stars by the Robinson family, accompanied by an intelligent robot and Dr. Zachary Smith, a villainous and cowardly stowaway. The show first aired on September 15, 1965, and was imagined to take place in the distant future, all the way in October 1997. As pointed out in a New York Times article in 1997, discussing an anniversary rebroadcast of the pilot episode, while the producers and writers of Lost in Space were a bit off in assuming that thirty years hence we’d have starships and robots, they goofed spectacularly regarding one very crucial aspect of modern life in the late 1990s.

  A scene set in mission control as the starship is preparing to launch features a familiar bank of computer monitors manned by an array of nearly identical short-sleeved white-shirted engineers. At the elbow of each mission control engineer is a small metal disc that one would never, ever find in the NASA of today. The science-fiction writers in 1965 never imagined that in thirty years, mission control would be a smoke- free environment and, consequently, no place for ashtrays. Thereby a cautionary note, that extrapolating potential scientific and technological innovations is duck soup compared with predicting future social customs.9090

  If the study of the natural world has demonstrated anything, it is that, unlike the Hulk, the smarter we get, the stronger we become. Now that you’ve finished this book, perhaps you’ll feel a little stronger yourself, if not in arm, then at least in mind. Which is the only type of strength that really matters. It is our intelligence that provides the competitive advantage that enabled us to become the dominant species on the planet. We are not as fast as the cougar, nor can we fly like an eagle. We are not as strong as the bear or as indestructible as the cockroach. It is our intelligence that is our superpower, if you will. As quantum mechanics pioneer Niels Bohr said, “Knowledge is in itself the basis of civilization.”

  The optimism at the heart of all comic-book adventures lies within the scientific endeavor as well, as they both hold out the promise that we will overcome our physical challenges and improve the world. How science is to be employed, whether to ease hunger and cure disease, or to develop an army of killer robots, is up to us. For guidance in how to use our knowledge wisely and ethically, one could do worse than look to the stories in comic books. It is as true today as it was many years ago, at the conclusion of Spider-Man’s debut in Amazing Fantasy # 15: “With great power there must also come—great responsibility.” But responsibility to do what? One answer was provided by the Man of Tomorrow in the story “The Last Days of Superman” in Superman # 156. Believing that he was dying from an infection of Virus X (fortunately, a false alarm), Superman etched a farewell message to the people of Earth on the moon with his heat-vision, a message he’d intended to be discovered after his demise. His final, parting words to the people of his adopted planet were: “Do good to others and every man can be a Superman.”

  Face front, Fearless Reader!

  RECOMMENDED READING

  INTRODUCTION

  There are many excellent reviews of the early history of comic books. In addition to the books explicitly cited in the text and listed below, I would recommend: Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book by Gerard Jones (Basic Books, 2004); Tales to Astonish: Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and the American Comic Book Revolution by Ronin Ro (Bloomsbury, 2004); Kirby, King of Comics by Mark Evanier (Abrams, 2008); The Ten Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), and Great American Comic Books by Ron Goulart (Publications International, 2001). Jim Steranko’s excellent two-volume The Steranko History of Comics (Supergraphics, 1970, 1972) is worth searching out for his thorough and entertaining elucidation of the lineage from pulp heroes to comic-book superheroes. Les Daniels has written extensively and elegantly on the history of comic-book characters, and his DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes (Bulfinch Press, 1995); Superman: The Complete History (Chronicle Books, 1998); Batman: The Complete History (Chronicle Books, 2004); Wonder Woman: The Complete History (Chronicle Books, 2001); and Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics (Harry N. Abrams, 1991) are all highly recommended, as is Silver Age: The Second Generation of Comic Book Artists by Daniel Herman (Hermes Press, 2004). A historical analysis of the role of comic books in American popular culture is presented in Comic Book Nation by Bradford W. Wright (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).

  While not explicitly a history of comic books, Baby Boomer Comics: The Wild, Wacky, Wonderful Comic Books of the 1960s by Craig Shutt (Krause Publications, 2003) is a fun overview of some of the high and low points of Silver Age comic books.

  Others have explored the science underlying comic-book superheroes, and any reader disappointed that their favorite character was not sufficiently discussed here may try consulting The Science of the X-Men by Linc Yaco and Karen Haber (ibooks, 2000); The Science of Superman by Mark Wolverton (ibooks, 2002); The Science of Superheroes by Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg (Wiley, 2002); and The Science of Supervillains by the same authors and publisher (2004). The science underlying other pop-cultural subjects has been explored in The Physics of Star Trek by Lawrence Krauss (Basic Books, 1995); The Science of Star Wars (St. Martin’s Press, 1998) and The Science of the X-Files (Berkley, 1998), both by Jeanne Cavelos; The Physics of Christmas by Roger Highfield (Little, Brown & Company, 1998); as well as his The Science of Harry Potter (Viking, 2002), and The Physics of the Buffyverse by Jennifer Ouellette (Penguin, 2006).

  Those readers interested in a deeper discussion of the philosophy and nature of physics investigations should consider Richard Feynman’s The Character of Physical Law (Random House, 1994) and The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman (Perseus Publishing, 2000); as well as Milton A. Rothman’s Discovering the Natural Laws: The Experimental Basis of Physics (Dover, 1989) and The Fermi Solution: Essays on Science by Hans Christian von Baeyer (Dover 2001).

  SECTION ONE-MECHANICS

  While this book covers many of the topics treated in an introductory physics class, those readers who are gluttons for punishment and wish to consult a traditional physics textbook (or seek to verify that I am not trying to pull any fast ones) may find Conceptual Physics by Paul G. Hewitt (Prentice Hall, 2002) helpful. It is written as a high-school physics text, so the mathematics remains at the algebra level. An abridged version of Richard Feynman’s brilliant lectures in physics, covering the basis of classical physics, Six Easy Pieces (Perseus Books, 1994) is highly recommended.

  There are several excellent biographies of Isaac Newton. The reader interested in learning more about this towering intellect may consider The Life of Isaac Newton by Richard Westfall (Cambridge University Press, 1994); Newton’s Gift by David Berlinski (Touchstone, 2000); and Isaac Newton by James Gleick (Pantheon Books, 2003).

  The discussion of the Special Theory of Relativity in Chapter 11 went by so fast that its brevity can be attributed to Lorentz contraction. The first book anyone interested in this subject should read is What Is Relativity by L. D. Landau and G. B. Romer (translated by N. Kemmer) (Dover, 2003), which in only sixty-five pages (with figures!) clearly explains, without equations, the physical concepts underlying Einstein’s theory. Fuller discussions of this fascinating subject can be found in Relativity and Common Sense by Hermann Bondi (Dover Publications, 1962); An Introduction to the Special Theory of Relativity by Robert Katz (D. Van Nostrand Co., 1964); Introduction to Special Relativity by James H. Smith (W. A. Benjamin, 1965); and Discovering the Natural Laws: The Experimental Basis of Physics by Milton A. Rothman (Dover, 1989). Be warned that all of these treatments deal with the mathematics underlying relativity as well as the physical concepts.

  SECTION TWO ENERGY-HEAT AND LIGHT

  Excellent overviews for the nonspecialist on how energy is created and transformed, particularly at the molecular level, can be found in The Stuff of Life by Eric P. Widmaier (W. H. Freeman & Company, 2002); The Machinery of Life by David S. Goo
dsell (Springer-Verlag, 1992); and Stories of the Invisible by Philip Ball (Oxford University Press, 2001). Background information on this mysterious quantity is available in Energies: An Illustrated Guide to the Biosphere and Civilization by Vaclav Smil (MIT Press, 1998) and Energy: Its Use and the Environment by Roger A. Hinrichs and Merlin Kleinbach (Brooks Cole, 2001), Third Edition. This last is a textbook written at a practically math- free level, with abundant information concerning the environmental issues involved in energy transformation.

  Excellent popular accounts of the fascinating history of thermodynamics are: A Matter of Degrees by Gino Segre (Viking, 2002); Understanding Thermodynamics by H. C. Van Ness (Dover Publications, 1969); and Warmth Disperses and Time Passes: The History of Heat by Hans Christian von Baeyer (Modern Library, 1998). Issues related to the measurement of temperature are considered in an accessible manner in Temperatures Very Low and Very High by Mark W. Zemansky (Dover Books, 1964), while phase transitions are discussed in The Periodic Kingdom by P. W. Atkins (Basic Books, 1995) and Gases, Liquids and Solids by D. Tabor (Cambridge University Press, 1979).