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Hi, I'm Jim Kakalios I'm a physics professor at the University of Minnesota,
and I was asked to do some science consulting for the Warner Brothers film: The Watchmen.
In Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan has amazing superpowers.
He can teleport from one location to the other, he can split himself into multiple copies,
he seems to be aware of the past present and future simultaneously.
Are any of these powers possible?
Jon Osterman gained superpowers when his intrinsic field was removed,
in a physics experiment gone array out at Gila flats.
Well, there is no such thing as an intrinsic field, but if there were -
if we could describe it as a wave - then we could have a situation such as
where Jon Osterman's wave, being the yellow wave, and if we generated a second wave,
externally, the purple wave, if they are completely
in phase we add the two we get an even bigger result.
But if we turn the purple wave and reverse it, so that it's now 180 degrees out of phase,
you add the two and the result is zero.
So this is a situation where you generate a wave if it's 180 degrees out of phase
with the existing wave, you can remove both waves.
In the movie, presumably, the intrinsic field that holds all of Jon Osterman's atoms
and nuclei together can be described as some sort of wave.
Somehow that wave is analyzed - and they generate a wave completely out of phase -
you remove the forces holding his atoms and nuclei together and he would disintegrate,
be torn apart, the light is tearing him to pieces as they say in the graphic novel.
Dr. Manhattan can appear in more than one place at once.
How is he doing this?
Perhaps he is diffracting his quantum mechanical wave function.
A hallmark of wave phenomenon is that you can get interference patterns,
so if a wave is passing through some region, some narrow boundary,
it can appear to be in many locations at once.
The waves interfere and can form a complex diffraction pattern.
Dr. Manhattan can do this presumably through his control of the quantum mechanical wave function.
Throw a rock into a pond and you get a series of ripples, throw two rocks into a pond
and you get a complex interference pattern as each ripple interacts with the other.
This is the signature of wave phenomenon.
Here you have a laser beam, you can see the laser beam reflected off of my U of M calendar,
the laser beam is now going towards a screen, and the screen is acting like the disturbance
on the pond, and we see a series of ripples...
a series of rings.
We saw with the laser light, and the screen, that one of the hallmarks of wave phenomenon is
that they can exhibit diffraction patterns.
That was the series of green dots we saw, that was the diffraction pattern
for the laser light passing through the screen.
If electrons have a wave associated with them, can they show diffraction patterns as well?
The answer is yes.
We passed an electron beam in this old style cathode ray tube, through a carbon crystal.
The carbon atoms serve the same roll as the screen did for the laser light.
Because the electrons have a wave associate with it, we get an interference pattern,
a diffraction pattern just like we saw with the laser light and the screen.
Same diffraction pattern therefore electrons must also have waves associated with them.
Dr. Manhattan has a wave associated with him that he can control at will,
so presumably when he chooses to diffract himself, he can be in several locations at once.
Not strictly correct from a physics point of view, but very cool none the less.
The Watchmen film crew had asked the National Academy of Sciences if they knew of anyone
who could do a little science consulting for them, the National Academy knew of me through
"The Physics of Superheroes," and so I got the call: "Would I be interested in working
on this film, have you ever heard of it...
it's called Watchmen."
Well, I have been reading comic books for a quite a while, and yes I had heard of Watchmen.
I was very excited and very happy to say yes.
I don't know how much or how little will show up in the finished product, but as Alex McDowell,
the production designer of Watchmen described it, they want to know what's around the corner
of a long hallway, even if the audience doesn't go down that corridor.
They wanted to know the grounding behind the science -
how does Dr. Manhattan move from one location to another?
How can he appear as multiple versions of himself?
Is there any real physics behind this?
They say he has quantum mechanical powers, what does that mean?
And so by giving them this background, they were able to use this, maybe not directly
in the film, but at the layer beneath,
to help provide a solid grounding for what they are doing.
So you don't stop and complain about the science that you are seeing on the screen,
that you're just caught up in enjoying the movie.
I have used comic books in my physics class, this will probably comes as a shock to you
but some of my students actually find physics dull.
I know, I felt the same way.
They always are concerned that it's going to have no applications, no relevance.
The common question, "When am I going to use this in my real life?"
Whenever I use superheroes to illustrate physics principals,
students never wonder whether they are going to use this in their real life.
Apparently they all have plans after graduation that involve spandex and patrolling the city.
Anyway, if you can analyze a comic book, a TV show, a movie and extract real correct science
out of it - if a comic book can apply real physics principals in the real world,
then maybe you will use it in your real life.
And one of the things that was very gratifying, was literally 100's and 100's of emails
and messages from students and teachers, people long out of college, who liked this idea
of using superheroes to explain physics principals asked if I had a book.
This lead to my eventual writing of the book.