Each July fans of science fiction, fantasy, and horror convene in San Diego, California, for Comic-Con, a four-day celebration of invented realities. Originally focused on Superman, Spider-Man, and other comic books, Comic-Con now encompasses TV, film, anime, manga, toys, card and video games, e-comics, and novels.
I went to Comic-Con for the first time last month—as a member of the press. Besides enjoying the spectacle and learning from attendees about their enthusiasms and from vendors about their products, my goal was to hunt for physics in and around the conference hall.
Some Comic-Con physics lies more or less in plain view. At least two notable comic-book characters are physicists. Bruce Banner, who morphs into the Incredible Hulk, designed and oversaw the testing of a gamma bomb, a fearsome physics-based weapon. Charles Xavier, the X-Men patriarch, is the son of a nuclear physicist and earned a PhD in biophysics (in addition to PhDs in genetics and psychology). Attendees who strolled along aisle 2200 of the exhibit hall would have encountered the American Physical Society's booth, where six members of the Physics Central team, including Laser Girl, handed out free, physics-themed comic books.
Hidden physics
But I was more interested in less obvious manifestations of Comic-Con physics. At booth MZ 18, I found one—in the person of a Rebel Alliance fighter pilot, who was staffing the fan table of San Diego Fan Force, a club for the city's Star Wars enthusiasts.
The pilot, a young woman, turned out to be an engineer in real life. She works on the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. What struck me was how naturally our conversation passed from the meager merits of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace to the challenge of operating an IR observatory from a modified Boeing 747. The bridge between science fiction and science fact was, I think, her dedication to both.
I found more hidden physics when I attended the live broadcast of the Nerdist podcast, which took place at 4th and B, a small concert venue in downtown San Diego. After warming up the crowd, Nerdist Chris Hardwick introduced his first guest, Wil Wheaton, who played Wesley Crusher for the first four seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Wheaton has forged a post-Trek career as an engaging and amusing writer, both online and in print. But despite his popularity among Comic-Con attendees, the audience at the Nerdist podcast had come to see two other stars of science fiction TV, Doctor Who's Karen Gillan and Matt Smith (shown below; thanks, Jenny, for the picture!).
According to their biographies, neither Gillan nor Smith has much of a background in physics, or even in science. Both actors decided to pursue careers in drama while still in high school. But when a member of the audience asked Smith whom he based his portrayal of the Doctor on, Smith replied, "Albert Einstein." The actor keeps a book of the physicist's quotations in his bathroom for inspiration.
Star Trek, Doctor Who, and other science fiction franchises depend increasingly on sophisticated computer-generated imagery (CGI) to depict worlds that are too elaborate to re-create in any other way. Achieving verisimilitude, or at least a convincing sense of disbelief, requires adhering to familiar physical laws even in microgravity and other unfamiliar settings. How do CGI artists ensure their animations are physically plausible?
I found my answer from the extension school of the University of California, San Diego—or, rather, at the school's Comic-Con booth. Most of the CGI that ends up on the screens of movie theaters, TVs, computers, and game consoles is created with the help of a powerful software package called Maya. "The physics is baked in," one of the school's staff explained to me.
Maya is made by Autodesk of San Rafael, California. Hoping to find the source of Maya's physics power, I looked at its latest brochure, where I found this sales pitch:
Take advantage of the multi-threaded NVIDIA® PhysX® engine to create rigid-body simulations directly in the Maya viewport—and if you use PhysX in your game engine, you’ll be matching the runtime solution. The new Digital Molecular Matter plug-in from Pixelux Entertainment™ enables you to create highly realistic shattering simulations with multiple interacting materials. Meanwhile, further development of the Nucleus unified simulation framework and its associated modules means that convincing pouring, splashing, and boiling liquid effects are easier to achieve.
In case it's not clear from the paragraph above, PhysX is a microprocessor whose architecture is designed specifically to calculate the physics that underlies realistic animation. Video games need such physics processing units (PPUs, as they're known) to keep up with the action. Animators, I presume, need them to speed the creative process.
Although physics doesn't pervade Comic-Con and the media it showcases, physics has a strong and diverse presence there. What's more, like George R. R. Martin's Westeros, Iain M. Banks's Culture, and other richly imagined alternative worlds, physics repays those who immerse themselves in it—with fascination, if not with money.
Charles Day
via: PhysicsToday.org
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