More Magneto Science Gaffes!

Last week I went through a few science gaffes that were powerful enough to rip me out of a particularly story, and after posting that column I’ve recognized a few more. I’ve often said in these columns, and will reiterate again, that I completely accept that the narrative is king and science, if necessary at all, should serve that narrative, not the other way around. So these examples are more like mental pressure points that jab my very brain rather than actual problems with the stories themselves.

As I thought back on the gaffes I overlooked, I realized that more than a few of them center on Magneto. Magneto is one of my favorite characters, and honestly one of the most powerful people in the Marvel Universe when you get right down to it, yet he seems prone to major faux pas when it comes to getting his powers to function correctly. Which is, frankly, a bit silly, since his power is literally fundamental, as electromagnetism is one of the four fundamental forces of the known universe. Needless to say, if I had that power the House of M would not have been an alternate reality. In this sense Magneto reminds me a lot of Dr. Light. Someone with a surficially simple power but one that is complex and staggering when examined a little more closely. I even wrote one of my first columns here at iFanboy actually dealt with the capabilities Dr. Light could possess given the right writing.

Quick! Let go of your blood!

So let’s get into a few of the instances where Magneto has botched the science. First and foremost has to be Uncanny X-Men #304. In this issue Magneto “grips the blood” of the X-Men in order to essentially paralyze them into submission. Conceptually this seems kind of cool because we know that the molecule hemoglobin, which is used by red blood cells to carry oxygen, contains iron. Iron + Magnets = Badassery, right? Wrong. The flaw here is that the iron in our blood is not ferromagnetic, meaning it does not interact with magnetic fields. The iron in hemoglobin ignores magnetic fields while bonded to oxygen, and is only slightly paramagnetic when unbound. And by slightly, I mean you’d need sensitive lab equipment to even detect it. And ultimately, this is a good thing. Imagine being in an MRI (the ‘M’ there stands for magnetic) if your blood could be moved around by shifting fields. That’s not a death I’d want. Coincidentally, this is why all those magnetic remedies, bracelets and such, do absolutely nothing. Oh well, moving on.

The next big foul-up is much more recent, and I can’t believe I forgot about it last week. In A v. X #1 Magneto throws down with Iron Man. And yes, spoilers ahead. Should be a quick fight, right? It certainly was in Ultimate War back in the day. Fortunately Iron Man brought his special suit that makes him immune to blah blah blah.

The correct answer is literally on the page.

That’s fine, not the point. The problem here is when Iron Man decides to play his super-secret wild card wherein he pulls from the magnetic field of Jupiter so he can pummel Magneto with his own power. Cool idea, but the problem is the distance involved in the energy transfer. Energy, even magnetic energy, is limited by the speed of light. So the arrival of Iron Man’s special surprise would not have been instantaneous. In fact, with some very basic math we can calculate how long Tony should have had to wait.

Earth is about 8.3 light minutes from the sun, i.e. at the speed of light a photon leaving the sun will arrive at earth 8.3 minutes later. This is an average because elliptical orbits being what they are, our distance from the sun shifts slightly during the course of the year. Jupiter is about 43.3 light minutes from the sun. Therefore, the field may have arrived after about 35 minutes. This is actually the quickest possible time because it presumes that earth and Jupiter are in alignment with the sun, which they rarely are. This fact is acknowledged within the pages of the comic, so the overall error is exceptionally perplexing. Sure there may have been some sort of Stark Tech Boom Tube equivalent, but if Tony had access to that why not just send Magneto to Jupiter and win the fight that way? Is this mess up really Magneto’s fault? Nah, but he should have let Tony know that what he was doing wouldn’t work. It’s only polite.

Now I realize I’m only at two foul ups but I fear I might be done. Granted, in the space of two articles I’ve chastised the Master of Magnetism 3 out of 5 times, far more than any other character. I think it’s mostly due to how much potential I see in Erik, and how often I think he falls short. I yearn for simple moments that show just how intricate and powerful Magneto is. Just once, I’d love to see a group of characters lost and to have one character wrongly assert which way north is and have Magneto pipe in to say “Nope, north is that way.”

“Well how do you know?” asks the idiot. Magneto opens his palm to review a sliver of metal acting as the pointer of a literally handmade compass. Perhaps only I would get a kick out of that, but those smaller moments could be things of scientific beauty, as opposed to the bombastic failings I’ve been forced to recount here.

So who’s your character that gets your sacred cow consistently wrong? I was surprised and delighted by the comments last week, and am hoping to keep the conversation going, so give me what you got!

 


Ryan Haupt was shocked very badly by a light socket one time. His first thought after coming to was to see if he had electric powers. He didn’t. Hear his other scientific laments on the podcast Science… sort of.

Comments

  1. Honest question – so was the Iron Blood scene in X-Men 2: X-Men United scientifically accurate? I always thought it was a super cool moment in the movie.

    • I love that moment!

      What they did right: they actually injected him with something metallic to give Magneto something to use, so they didn’t just pretend blood was ferromagnetic

      What they did wrong: liquids usually don’t work as magnets, you need the internal structure of a solid to hold a magnetic field, if that makes sense

    • They dissolved the magnetic powder into his drink or whatever and then they used to two fragments to go bananas.

      Question: Is Adamantium or Vibranium magnetic. I say “NO”.

    • Given enough raw power frogs are magnetic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1vyB-O5i6E

      So, Answer: YES

    • Doesn’t vibranium redirect all energy though? I bet it would be like throwing one of those weighted wacky kickballs if magneto tried to throw Cap’s shield around.

    • fAdamantium must be magnetic. Remember when it was pulled off of Wolverine’s skeleton through his pores by Magneto?

    • Yeah that’s what I was thinking of, I straight up cried myself to sleep the night I read that thinking Wolverine would actually die. Effing Fatal Attractions.

    • I’m with @dirtyrottenscoundrel. It’s a made up metal, so they can kind of do what they want, I guess. Plus, the history of it seems to indicate it is, and, as far as I know (which could be totally wrong), there’s never been a story that indicated it wasn’t magnetic, thereby creating some sort of contradiction.

      Vibranium, on the other hand, seems kind of complicated.

    • i watched the raven last night(that edgar allan poe movie) in which they suggested that certain printing inks are magnetic.
      is that scientifically accurate?

    • I work at a newspaper and if memory serves from my editors frequent random tidbits of news history they used to be but modern inks are no longer magnetic. I doubt the old inks were as magnetic as the movie said though

    • I found this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_ink_character_recognition

      So yes, there is magnetic ink, but I’d suspect it’s not magnetic until it had dried, i.e. become solid.

    • I was about to ask if Adamantium was magnetic. I guess the correct term is ferromagnetic. It is depicted that way in the Xmen movies, when Magneto freezes Logan in place. And it is also in the comics, most notably in the famous scene where Magneto rips all the Adamantium out of Wolverine’s body.

      But would it really be? That seems like it would be very inconvenient for ol’ Logan. Just consider Ryan’s MRI example – what could really get messy. Maybe it’s only slightly magnetic?

      I did find this – interesting stuff: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_all_the_magnetic_metals

  2. I’ve somehow forgotten/blocked out that scene from Uncanny #304. More likely, I was a kid then, so I probably said, “Science is awesome!”

    Anyway, as an adult looking at that scene, I have a question. Let’s pretend that it WAS possible to stop someone’s blood magnetically. Wouldn’t that, you know, kill them? Granted, I’m an English teacher, not a doctor, but it seems like blood flowing through your body MIGHT be kind of important to living.

    • You’re clearly not an English teacher, otherwise you would know the correct version of that final sentence should ‘read “…blood flowing through your body IS kind of important to living.”

      🙂

  3. Love these posts Ryan! Magneto should clearly be nearly unstoppable. Could he manage to stop the rotation of the earth if he wanted? Also, other pet peeves include stuff that is made up of hypotheticals to begin with, but include telepaths (how could you ever defeat someone who knows what you’re going to do before you do it and can control your actions?) and space travel (it’s supposed to take a very long time to get somewhere in space, yes? But I know, boom tubes and warp speed generally provide the explanations.)

    • Magneto’s done almost as bad as stopping the earth’s rotation – he’s messed up the earth’s electromagnetic field on multiple occasions, causing various degrees of issues for the MU.

      The mind control ability he had always got me, and yet it was a major plot point – this has been mentioned as the reason why Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch stayed in the Brotherhood for as long as they did.

      And yes, a telepath should be the most powerful person in any universe, which is why all the X-Men enemies wear special helmets. Or, the telepaths just happen to be missing – between “dying” and going off with the Shi’ar, Xavier has been missing for a big part of the X-Men’s career. Or Magneto has screwed up the EM field again, which apparently affects long-range telepathy. Or *gasp* they’ve lost their powers (Xavier has lost his powers on various occasions and has been missing for long stretches of time, while Jean Grey lost her telepathy after her ressurection and only got it back shortly before X-Men #1). Plus, the moral barriers. Come to think of it, besides Emma Frost and Mastermind, there aren’t any evil telepaths in the Marvel world I can name, which may be another reason why a telepath has taken over the world yet. All Mastermind likes to do is conjur up dirty Colonial-era fantasies.

  4. Oh, also how guns work. The force of a gunshot cannot send someone flying without also sending the person who shot it flying backwards.

  5. The Marvel writers have been making that controlling the iron in the blood leap of scientific logic since at least 1973, when Magneto starting controlling minds in Avengers #110-111 be controlling the blood flow inside them. The whole Magneto has power over Magnetism has always grated against real science considering that magnetism is just the flip side of electric forces. You can’t have one without the other. And once you start being able to manipulate electrons you can pretty much control everything: be it ferromagnetic, paramagnetic, conducting, insulated, or chocolate pudding. Definitely a case where we need to just accept that comic physics are not the same as ours.

    But yeah, the glossing over of the over 1 hour round trip to Jupiter was mighty annoying. AvX followed that up with polar bears in the Antarctic, so you can throw basic zoology out as well.

    • The issues of Avengers where Magneto uses blood moving powers for mind control are a sight to behold. How long would you have to practice before you figured out you could do that? And why go for the blood when you can screw with the electrical impulses in the brain?

    • exactly. My roommate is a huge magneto fan and he always brings up electric impulses and how if he were really all that powerful he could just make everyone forget he existed or think he was president or just make all the humans kill themselves.

      My roomie is a very “up” person is what I’m getting at.

  6. Is this fun?

    • For the most part, I try to not let my science background interfere with the enjoyment of the comics I read. Sure, some gaffes are really blatant and can pull you out but… its just comics. Then again, I haven’t read superhero comics in a while so, there you go.

    • It’s totally fun!

  7. @Ryan: I have a couple questions I’ve been wanting to ask ya and this seems like as good a time as any.

    1.) Why (do you think) Superman seemingly needs to keep his eyes open to use his x-ray vision? Is it just for storytelling purposes so we can see his (typically) blue irises and pupils? Would the thin layer of his “steel” eyelids really create that much interference? Do x-rays even work that way?

    2.) Grant Morrison almost always uses science in his stories. Usually it’s futuristic or alien pseudo-science and it’s almost always full of crazy names for technology and elements. I dunno how you feel about his work in general, but does that stuff bother a man of science such as yourself? Or do you enjoy that crazy fictional science? Personally, I love it. But I’m not a scientist.

    3.) Geoff Johns seemed to make a point to include a lot of science during his Flash run. The effort alone was something I always admired and enjoyed about that run. Did all that make or break the run for you?

    Btw: If this isn’t the place for such queries, or the answers require too much detail, feel free to ignore them.

    Other science nitpicks that bother me as a layman.
    – The inconsistency of Wolverine’s healing factor and the way that writers will tweak it to suit their needs always drives me crazy.
    – The seemingly indefinite possibilities of comic-book telepathy and/or telekinesis (I realize it’s scientifically impossible, but the inconsistency drives me crazy).
    – Superman. In general.

    • You hit upon one of the great flaws in bad science fiction writing. It is not having things that occur that violate the laws of physics as we know it. It is a failure to set up the rules for your universe and then worse failing to obey the rules that have been set up. Some of the most fun in comics/science fiction are clever solutions to the agreed upon rules, whatever they are. Some of the least fun is feeling like the writers just wave their magic get of trouble pseudo-science wand to fix all problems.

      So as a scientist and a comic book reader, I am not bothered by outlandish, crazy stuff. Either it is pure fantasy and I concentrate instead on the character work or art or themes, whatever, OR I accept the crazy new rules of physics or magic or politics and enjoy the sci-fi puzzle/story (in addition to the all the character/art/thematic stuff that needs to be there). I only get annoyed when, for instance in AvX Vs. #1, the writer goes out of there way to establish how they are using our established laws of physics and understanding of the solar system, only to blow something so basic as light travel time.

    • PS – Clearly X-rays don’t work that way. He would need to be shooting out high energy X-rays and retrieving them like a radar, which would kill everything he came across. This is a case of a clear set of rules. Superman can see through things LIKE X-rays were going through them if he keeps his eyes open and concentrates. He can’t see through lead or his eyelids. If the writer obeys that rule they can riff all sorts of crazy ideas and I would be satisfied.

    • @JimBilly4: re: x-ray vision: Good point. Thanks. That’s embarassingly obvious. Good thing I’m not embarassed that easily. Especially by my obvious ignorance of all things scientific.

    • I don’t know if I would call it embarassingly obvious. It is actually complicated. There are X-rays flying around all the time which Superman’s supereyes could be sensitive to. Occasionally one will fly through the object Superman is trying to look through. So then he wouldn’t need to bombard people, but would just be sensitive to background x-ray levels. The thing about X-rays though, is that as you start going up in energy, like the X-ray energy you would need to penetrate a concrete building, you start running out of photons. Unlike the optical light you see from the sun, which produces silly amounts of photons even in what you would consider low light conditions, when you start talking background X-ray levels the number of photons gets quite countable. Now take just the ones coming from a single direction in a couple of seconds of time and you will start to get in a situation where you are trying to “see” based on a three photons hitting your eye. Not exactly going to give you a great view of Lois’ undergarments. This also ignores the issue that the tiny number of X-rays will act more like a particle than a wave in such photon-starved circumstances, further complicating what we would call “vision”.

    • Wow. People like you guys fascinate me. Thanks man. That was really interesting. Some people may find this exhausting, but I think dissecting these tiny details of science fiction makes it all the more enjoyable.

  8. Ryan, I really dig these posts. I remember listening to sci-fi authors mentioning getting the science correct. Although story is king, I feel a balance between reality and super fantasy has to make for a better story. I really dig you pointing this stuff out.
    The thing that always bothered me were the massive amounts of equipment and guns strapped to a character. When I was a teenager it started to feel really unrealistic, no matter how cool the design looked, my brain would scream bloody overkill. I think it was because so many characters were created using the same template with no logical reason.

  9. As a geologist I somewhat disagree. We love decking ourselves out in gadgets. I like to think of myself like some sort of rural Batman. Brunton compass, canteen, rock hammer, camera, scale bar, hand lens, multitool, knife, etc.

    And then I look at soldiers and think about the shear weight they carry around all the time. Being in good shape comes with many advantages.

    But those are just reasons it doesn’t bug me personally, I agree that at a certain point it does become ridiculous.

  10. I’m actually reminded of one of my favourite comic book moments in an old issue of Green Lantern. Hal’s fighting an renegade Green Lantern who is much more gifted with the ring than he is. Hal knows he’s beat if he tries to fight him head on, so he devises a plan to speed at the renegade Lantern at light speed, red shifting his green energy to yellow thus cracking through his shield due to the yellow impurity weakness.
    Now, there’s a few things that you could nitpick at that(well.. maybe more than a few), but it’s still a very interesting science-y moment in comics.

  11. Not being all science-y, I don’t notice a lot of these things. But the things that I do notice a lot nowadays are where the character’s weight is not taken into consideration.

    For example, Spider-Man wants to get somewhere, so he shoots a web that attaches to one of the ground railing things on a helicopter. I took a helicopter tour one time and they spent a decent amount of time worrying about how much each of us going in weighed and making sure we were balanced. After all of that, I doubt you could just attach yourself to a helicopter without anybody noticing.

    Also, when a hero like Spidey lands on the roof of a car, and the people inside don’t notice. Between his weight and the sound it should make, that should never happen. It also should probably make a major dent.

  12. I caught that gaffe in the fight between Magneto and Iron Man. I think I even wrote about on the CBR message board. Forgot to go back and check what kind of response it got, but I remember that incident really sticking out.

  13. I know you’re asking about comics, but the science gone wrong moment I usually remember comes from the movie Timecop.

    Timecop was the movie which carbon dated gold bars. (They were proving they came through time from the US Civil War era.) Again, let me repeat, they CARBON dated GOLD. Please note: Carbon dating requires…CARBON…in fact carbon-14, but at this point who’s counting. I mean, carbon-13, carbon-14, hey, whatever it takes (“Mr. Mom” joke).

    Now mind you it didn’t take me out of the film, because I wasn’t that into it. It was just more funny that carbon dating was thought of as some sort of universal time measurement, or something along those lines.