My Blog for Physics in Film

            For my post I chose to analyze three characters from the X-Men movie franchise as I have seen in it again recently (not just because they were an example) and have not had time to watch Iron Man due to outside circumstances. I am not an expert on all X-Men and related paraphernalia and have really only seen the live-action movies and sporadically played various videos games. I chose to analyze Storm, Nightcrawler, and Iceman.

            Storm has the ability to control weather according to her portrayal in the movies as well as wikipedia. Assuming and accepting that she can manipulate weather with virtually perfect efficiency, where does all that energy come from. If it follows the law of conservation of mass and energy, it cannot just appear from oblivion. It would be highly unlikely that she was the provider of such energy as the average thunder storm puts out 10,000,000 kilowatt-hours (3.6×10¹³ joules) according to wikipedia. Just about 8.6 billion food calories; that is a lot of bagels. Perhaps she can funnel the energy from another place of Earth or perhaps the universe; if so then the temperature there would have to fall acordingly, 3.6×10­¹³ joules to be exact. Perhaps she can funnel energy from another dimension or something. This would still “converse” the energy, but would increase the total energy in our dimension. Or somehow, she can convert mass to energy to fuel her climatic rage. Only a small amount of mass would be needed. For the average T-storm she would need just 400 mg of matter using the famous E=mc² equation. Even stranger, maybe she, or all the X-men can tap into Zero Point Energy…or Midi-chlorians…

            Second is Nightcrawler, who has the power of teleportation. But how does he teleport. Is he somehow able to create and manipulate a wormhole around him. A wormhole would allow him to teleport long distances through things without causing any relativistic side effects. As an alternative theory, perhaps he does not travel at all and transform into a particle of somekind that does not interact with matter and travels as some huge speed. However, traveling at huge speeds would have rather dramatic relativistic side effect.  If he did travel this way, he would appear to come out long after he disappeared because because of his blazing fast travel. Although to him it would appear instantaneous. A wormhole, however, circumvents this problem.

The only other issue is with how does he make this and does it require energy to form. The ability to create wormholes can be explained by his mutant powers but does he need energy to make them? If no energy is required then there is not problem. However, some is likely needed. As with Storm, the energy must come from somewhere and the options listed for Storm could all fit the bill. He may be able to supply the energy himself with food energy perhaps, but as I do not know how much energy it takes to open a wormhole have no further comments on this.

In contrast in Storm is Iceman, manipulator of cold. He must absorb energy instead of releasing it. Given that he has the ability to manipulate energy, where does it all go. If it follows the rules of physics, it must go somewhere. Does it get transported to somewhere else, another dimension perhaps? Maybe he can convert the energy into mass of somekind. If he were to cool down 1 kg of boiling water in a teapot from the boiling point of 100 deg C to 0 deg C to make ice tea, how much matter would be created. The amount of heat transfers comes from the formula Q = mcdeltaT = 1000g*4.186J/g*degC*-100degC = 418,400 J and then to perform the phase change is Q = mL = 333 j/g * 1000g = 333,000 J for a total of 751,400 J which converts to 8.34E-11 kg. That is a very little mass and would go virtually undetected. Maybe Iceman leaves “droppings” of his collected energy whenever he uses his powers or perhaps the energy goes into something harmless like hair growth or to fortify his body.