Hulk Smash Puny Laws of Physics!
Jun. 16th, 2008 04:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vitruvian23Saw the Incredible Hulk movie over the weekend with No. 1 son, and much as reviewed, it was a nice little action fest with just a touch of gravitas added by Norton and Hurt's acting chops.
I'm going to put most of this behind a lj-cut, but not because I'm letting loose with any spoilers, just for length.
Okay, to continue with my trend of overanalyzing comic book and science fiction science, here's the
I'm going to put most of this behind a lj-cut, but not because I'm letting loose with any spoilers, just for length.
Okay, to continue with my trend of overanalyzing comic book and science fiction science, here's the
question - when Bruce Banner transforms into the Incredible Hulk, he gets much bigger and bulkier, very rapidly indeed. For example, according to the Handbooks Marvel likes to periodically put out, he goes from about 5'9", 150 lbs to something on the order of 7'6" and over 1000 lbs. In the current movie, he's more like 9 feet tall, and in the Ang Lee version he fluctuated even more than that. So, where does all that extra mass come from (let alone how is it turned into muscle, bone, and sinew that rapidly)? And conversely, where does the Hulkish mass go to when he turns back into puny Banner?
Several answers have been proposed to this conundrum over the years. First of all, let's dispose of what should be a fairly obvious no-go. The energy of his gamma irradiation is not getting transformed into mass and then back. How do we know? Well, first of all, his degree of radioactivity has never been presented as going down when he bulks up. Secondly, it's an orders of magnitude thing. Remember Einstein's equation E = Mc^2, that explains the relationship between mass and energy? Well, when you perform the calculations, it turns out that even one gram of matter (be it water, rock, sand, or muscle and bone) converts to a truly astounding amount of energy - more than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Given that the Hulk has several hundred *kilograms* on Bruce, turning into the Hulk would require more energy than has been released in every man-made explosion and power plant, ever - and when he turned back into Banner, the resulting explosion would make even volcanic eruptions like Krakatoa look like firecrackers. So, no, it's not energy-mass conversion.
The old Handbooks used the dodge of suggesting the mass comes from some 'extradimensional' source, but I find the idea of a parallel dimension being harvested for organic matter pretty creepy. The Wild Cards prose superhero novels suggested a different dodge based on the idea of virtual particles for the similar transformation undertaken by their character Elephant Girl, but the problem becomes if you can get a certain amount of mass this way, there's still the mass-energy equivalence to worry about.
I have a different suggestion, brought to mind by the special effects in, of all sources, the Ang Lee version. It probably messes just as badly with biology and physiology as any other explanation, but may be marginally more plausible in terms of conservation of matter. In the Ang Lee Hulk, I noticed that when the Hulk changes back into Bruce, his body seems to let off steam as he shrinks, and puny Banner ends up in a pretty substantial puddle at the end of the process. Now, maybe this was just the weather in San Francisco that day, but maybe not. The major constituents of organic matter, such as the muscle in your (or presumably, the Hulk's) arms, are carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen (not in that order). Of these, nitrogen and oxygen are in ample supply in the air around us. Carbon is present in smaller quantities as part of carbon dioxide, and hydrogen of course is the H in H2O, therefore present in the form of water vapor in the air. Could it be that in turning into the Hulk, Banner's body somehow absorbs these elements from the air around him, and then releases them again when turning back?
Consider - the process of converting simple elements and compounds into bodily tissues would still be energy-intensive, but many orders of magnitude less so than trying to create those same tissues from, as Spock would say, pure energy. Of course, this would mean that Banner would have the effect of being a massive dehumidifier when becoming the Hulk, and a portable sauna of sorts when changing back. A mad scientist enemy (named Sterns, perhaps?) could figure the process out and try to contain Banner in a chamber of dessicated air, thereby denying him the fuel to Hulk out. Of course, this goes nowhere near explaining where the Hulk gets either the structural toughness nor the energy requirements for his massive feats of strength, but how much do you want me to fit in one essay?
Several answers have been proposed to this conundrum over the years. First of all, let's dispose of what should be a fairly obvious no-go. The energy of his gamma irradiation is not getting transformed into mass and then back. How do we know? Well, first of all, his degree of radioactivity has never been presented as going down when he bulks up. Secondly, it's an orders of magnitude thing. Remember Einstein's equation E = Mc^2, that explains the relationship between mass and energy? Well, when you perform the calculations, it turns out that even one gram of matter (be it water, rock, sand, or muscle and bone) converts to a truly astounding amount of energy - more than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Given that the Hulk has several hundred *kilograms* on Bruce, turning into the Hulk would require more energy than has been released in every man-made explosion and power plant, ever - and when he turned back into Banner, the resulting explosion would make even volcanic eruptions like Krakatoa look like firecrackers. So, no, it's not energy-mass conversion.
The old Handbooks used the dodge of suggesting the mass comes from some 'extradimensional' source, but I find the idea of a parallel dimension being harvested for organic matter pretty creepy. The Wild Cards prose superhero novels suggested a different dodge based on the idea of virtual particles for the similar transformation undertaken by their character Elephant Girl, but the problem becomes if you can get a certain amount of mass this way, there's still the mass-energy equivalence to worry about.
I have a different suggestion, brought to mind by the special effects in, of all sources, the Ang Lee version. It probably messes just as badly with biology and physiology as any other explanation, but may be marginally more plausible in terms of conservation of matter. In the Ang Lee Hulk, I noticed that when the Hulk changes back into Bruce, his body seems to let off steam as he shrinks, and puny Banner ends up in a pretty substantial puddle at the end of the process. Now, maybe this was just the weather in San Francisco that day, but maybe not. The major constituents of organic matter, such as the muscle in your (or presumably, the Hulk's) arms, are carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen (not in that order). Of these, nitrogen and oxygen are in ample supply in the air around us. Carbon is present in smaller quantities as part of carbon dioxide, and hydrogen of course is the H in H2O, therefore present in the form of water vapor in the air. Could it be that in turning into the Hulk, Banner's body somehow absorbs these elements from the air around him, and then releases them again when turning back?
Consider - the process of converting simple elements and compounds into bodily tissues would still be energy-intensive, but many orders of magnitude less so than trying to create those same tissues from, as Spock would say, pure energy. Of course, this would mean that Banner would have the effect of being a massive dehumidifier when becoming the Hulk, and a portable sauna of sorts when changing back. A mad scientist enemy (named Sterns, perhaps?) could figure the process out and try to contain Banner in a chamber of dessicated air, thereby denying him the fuel to Hulk out. Of course, this goes nowhere near explaining where the Hulk gets either the structural toughness nor the energy requirements for his massive feats of strength, but how much do you want me to fit in one essay?
