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"Small
Wonder "
by Quentin Long
Some folks like to make noise about how superheroes should be "realistic". These people are flat-out wrong, as should be clear after a moment's thought; "realism" and "superpowers" are two concepts that go together every bit as well as "skateboard" and "tyrannosaurus rex".
That said, it must be admitted that there's unrealistic... and there's unrealistic. The power of flight may not be something that ordinary human beings possess, but birds do it every day; super-strength is a mundane human capability with the decimal point shifted a few places to the right; and even the Creeper's regeneration is basically the normal human healing process with fuel-injection and afterburners.
And then there are powers that bend the laws of physics (not to mention the reader's credulity) to the breaking point, if not beyond. Case in point: the Atom (a.k.a. physicist Ray Palmer), who can shrink down to subatomic scale and set his body mass anywhere between zero and his normal full-size weight.
The Atom's credibility gap starts with his origin story, which tells us that Ray Palmer found a fallen meteorite that was made of matter from a white dwarf star. Although this stuff has a density measured in tons per teaspoonful, and the meteor was roughly ten inches in diameter, Ray nonetheless managed to pick the damn thing up and drive it back to his personal laboratory.
Once there, Ray discovered that when he shone ultraviolet light on the meteor, he could use it to reduce the size, and/or mass, of pretty much anything at all; he could bring 'em back to full size/mass by exposing the meteor to infrared light. His experimentation was hampered by the inconvenient fact that everything he shrunk (except for his own body and the meteor-stuff itself) tended to explode within seconds.
Anyhow, Ray turned the meteor into several thousand yards of highly unusual thread, from which fiber he wove the costume that made him the superhero called... the Atom.
So: How does a normal human being manage to lift a multi-thousand- ton chunk of white dwarf star matter? What sort of tools are needed to reshape that material into fibers thin enough to weave into fabric? How can a normal human being avoid being crushed to death, let alone move around like an Olympic gymnast, while covered, head to toe, by God knows how many thousand tons of white dwarf fabric? Why should normal matter explode when it's shrunk? How can exposure to specific wavelengths of light alter the size and mass of anything? How can the Atom breathe when he's shrunk down to where an oxygen molecule is too big to fit inside a lung? Why does the Atom refer to 180 pounds as his full weight, when he's also got several thousand tons of dwarf star mass to play with? Since his method of shrinking has a lethally explosive side effect, how can the Atom have possibly managed to survive all those years of his superheroic activities? Given that the Atom's size is a variable, what's so special about his normal 6-foot height that makes him unable to exceed that size? And speaking of upper limits, why can't the Atom adjust his own mass up beyond 180 pounds?
All these questions have answers, and the answers start with gravity.
Here on Earth-Prime, science has come up with two different ways of looking at gravity. If you go with Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, gravity is a geometrical effect, merely a consequence of bending the fabric of space/time. We see the Moon going around the Earth, and we think it moves along an elliptical path, but Einstein says this is an illusion. According to Uncle Albert, the Moon is really moving along the straightest path it possibly can; it's just that space/time in the Earth's vicinity is bent around so that this "straightest path" ends up looping back onto itself.
If you don't see how a "straight" path can meet itself like that, imagine trying to draw a straight line on a fully inflated beach ball. You can't draw a perfectly straight line on a beach ball, because a perfectly straight line needs a perfectly flat surface, and the ball's surface is curved; you can, however, draw a line that's as close to perfect straightness as the surface will allow. The straightest line you can draw on that curved surface is a so-called "great circle", a circle with the same diameter as the beach ball itself.
(Similarly, the Moon's elliptical orbit is the straightest path the Moon can follow, given how strongly space/time around the Earth is bent by Earth's mass.)
The other way of looking at gravity is to see it as one of the four fundamental forces of Nature: those being gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force. This is the view of particle physics, of quantum mechanics, which requires that every force be carried by a subatomic particle. In the case of gravity, the particle which does the necessary "heavy lifting" (sorry, couldn't resist) is called the "graviton". Although gravitons are strictly theoretical as far as current Earth-Prime science is concerned, the theories which predict gravitons have some pretty solid experimental support; and Earth-Prime physicists continue to look for gravitons.
These two concepts of gravity are quite different from one another; I propose that they're both true, just as photons are considered to be both waves and particles. Thus, a graviton is a small amount of space/time curvature, all wrapped up in a neat subatomic particle package. And now that we've got the background out of the way, we can see what all this has to do with the Atom!
All matter generates a continual torrent of gravitons, directly proportionate to the mass in question; you get twice as many from a two-pound mass as from a one-pound mass, and so on. But whereas the gravitons of normal matter spew outwards in all directions from their source material(s), the gravitons of Ray Palmer's meteor tend to stay put, not moving beyond the surface of that meteor.
It would be interesting to know how Ray's meteor came to acquire this unique property, of course. A speculation: There is evidence from which one can strongly infer that normal gravitons move faster than light, which would mean that gravitons have imaginary mass (i.e. their mass is some multiple of the square root of -1), which in turn would mean that gravitons cannot move slower than lightspeed. If the gravitons of Ray's meteor have a non-zero real mass, that might account for their anomalous qualities and behavior. However, none of the published stories address this point, so we'll just have to leave it as an open question.
When gravitons pour out from a chunk of normal matter, they bend space/time around that chunk, thus creating its gravitational field and attracting other nearby masses and so forth. Since gravitons don't pour out from Ray's meteor, it doesn't have a proper gravitational field; in effect, that meteor has no mass at all (but see below for how light interacts with the meteor).
Even though we don't know why the gravitons of Ray's meteor behave oddly, we do know (from Ray's early experiments) that intense light has a significant effect on the meteor's gravitons. Exposure to ultraviolet light (i.e. photons with a high energy level, ergo short wavelengths) causes the meteor to expel gravitons; when exposed to infrared light, contrariwise (i.e. photons with a low energy level, ergo long wavelengths), the meteor sucks back in all the gravitons it had released previously. This accounts for Ray's ability to lift the meteor: since Earth's atmosphere filters out almost all ultraviolet light, the trivially small amount of UV that could hit the meteor was only enough to make it expel a trivially small percentage of its gravitons. Which, in turn, means that the meteor's gravity field was only a tiny fraction of its full value -- something in the neighborhood of 1/100,000 or so, which would reduce several thousand tons to an effective residual mass of several score pounds; well within the lifting capacity of a normal human.
This answers all the questions about the Atom's mass-related powers. Why can Ray only reduce his mass down to zero, and not increase it beyond his normal 180 pounds? Because he doesn't create any additional gravitons, he just makes sure that the existing ones don't go anywhere. Why isn't Ray crushed flat by the sheer weight of the costume? Because virtually all of its mass is negated by the restricted flow of gravitons. Why can't the Atom add the mass of the dwarf star matter to his own mass? Because while he could do so if he felt like it, Ray Palmer isn't stupid -- see the question just previous.
Now on to the Atom's size-related abilities. There's a couple of ways you can use gravitons to make an object smaller; the simplest method involves brute force. An intense-enough gravity field can smash anything down to any desired degree of smallness; so all you need to do is keep adding gravitons until the resulting gravity field compresses your target to the desired size. Mind you, this "trash compactor" schtick doesn't even pretend to leave the target in a functional condition, but if size alone is all you care about...
Fortunately, there's an alternative technique, which exploits the space/time-bending properties of gravitons in a more subtle manner. The idea is: use gravitons to bend space/time around the object, thus creating a volume of space whose inside really is bigger than its outside. I've made three diagrams which will hopefully prove illuminating; each one has a regular grid to show where space/time is bent, and how strong the bending is...
Here we've got the initial conditions. The nice, straight grid means that we've got nice, flat space/time; no bending here, thanks. The red-and-blue circle is the target object, and that thick, gray ring around the target is the region where we will bend some space/time a bit later on.
And here's what happens to our nice, straight grid after we start bending space/time in that ring-shaped region. Notice that space/time is perfectly flat both inside and outside the ring; the distortion is limited to the area covered by the ring proper. Notice, also, that our target doesn't have as many grid-lines running through it now as it did before.
And here's how things end up appearing to be. The target itself has not been affected in any way; however, thanks to the bent space/time around the target, any observer outside the ring of bent space/time will perceive the target as being smaller than it used to be. Furthermore, any observer inside the ring will perceive everything outside the ring as being larger than it used to be. In effect: the region inside the ring is larger than the outside of the ring.
Even though the target is still the same size, the bent space/time that surrounds it means that it can (and will) behave as though it really has shrunk -- it will interact with the outside world as though it truly were that smaller size.
So, finally: we see how the Atom does the size-changing trick; because he uses gravitons to fold space/time around himself, the (constant volume) inside of his costume is larger than the (variably small) outside.
At this point, some of you may be saying to yourselves: "I don't get it -- if Ray is already using the meteor's gravitons to control his mass, how can he also use those gravitons to control his size?"
Well, the meteor's gravitons absorb energy from incoming UV light, perhaps in a manner similar to how the photoelectric effect affects ordinary electrons; and it's this absorbed energy that lets the gravitons move on out away from the meteor. A highly energized graviton moves farther away from the meteor than does a less-energetic graviton, just as the height a thrown object can reach is determined by the velocity with which you throw it; beyond a certain energy level (i.e. the functional equivalent of "escape velocity" for thrown objects), the meteor's gravitons fly out with no end in sight, just as normal gravitons do from normal matter.
Only those gravitons that are energetic enough to achieve "escape velocity" affect Ray's mass -- the meteor's other gravitons, which are still effectively bound to the meteor, affect his size. Thus, Ray defines his size and mass independently of each other by means of specific combinations of UV-range light frequencies.
Now we can answer thequestions relating to the Atom's size-related abilities. How can the Atom breathe at a subatomic size? Because there's no physical barrier that prevents oxygen molecules from reaching his lungs; and, likewise, there's nothing to obstruct carbon dioxide molecules from leaving his lungs. No matter what size Ray shrinks down to, he never lets his mass drop to zero; as a result, free oxygen molecules are continually attracted to him by the gravity of his non-zero mass. These molecules pass through the region of bent space/time around the Atom, quickly reaching the interior region of flat space/time that Ray himself occupies.
As to how the Atom copes with exhaled carbon dioxide, it's much the same story, except in reverse; by definition, every molecule he exhales moves away from him at a nontrivial velocity. These molecules pass through the region of bent space/time to mingle with whatever other molecules are in the Atom's general vicinity.
Why can't the Atom enlarge himself beyond Ray Palmer's normal height? Because gravity is purely an attractive force, which means gravitons only bend space/time in one direction, and the more bending, the smaller he gets. Unless and until Ray can get his hands on gravitons which bend space/time in the opposite direction, his normal six-foot height is the largest size he can achieve.
At this point, we can answer all the remaining questions that were raised earlier. What tools did Ray use to reshape his meteor into several thousand yards of "thread"? The published stories haven't gone into any great detail on this point, but given that the meteor's astronomical mass is almost completely negated by lack of ambient UV light, Ray would appear not to have needed to use anything beyond common (and commonly-available) metal-working tools.
Why does shrinking have a lethally explosive side-effect? Because molecules are always in motion. When space/time is flat, the distances between the various atoms in a molecule are always the same; when space/time gets seriously bent, however, inter-atomic distances can and do change without notice -- becoming arbitrarily large or small -- depending on exactly how space/time is bent at which specific location. So as a molecule moves along through bent space/time, two atoms may become so close together that their nuclei fuse... and when two of the lighter nuclei (i.e. anything above iron in the periodic table) merge into one, they release energy.
Conversely, two atoms may become so far apart that their interatomic bond "snaps," releasing the energy of that bond. Either way, it's not going to be pretty.
How has Ray Palmer managed to avoid blowing himself to bits all these years? Well, when he was initially experimenting with his meteor, Ray survived shrinking himself because he got real lucky -- none of the atoms in his body got displaced badly enough to cause any sort of energy release. After he made the meteor into his costume, Ray survived because everything he did involved sending gravitons away from his body, so that none of the ill effects of shrinkage could affect him; and because he was able to carefully calibrate his size and mass controls to avoid causing any nasty problems.
This concludes our examination of Ray "the Atom" Palmer's super- powers; I hope you enjoyed it, and I look forward to reading your commentary in respone to it.
Th' Per'fesser can be reached at [email protected], where he labors tirelessly on his theorem that Size Doesn't Really Matter.
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