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Science of Watchmen
Poziom:
Temat: Edukacja
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.
