The Physics of Watchmen: Why is Doc Manhattan blue?

[Shifty]

The Physics of Watchmen
Professor, author, and die-hard comics fan James Kakalios explains why Dr. Manhattan is blue, how the Owlship can fly, and more

University of Minnesota physics professor Jim Kakalios teaches a class called “Everything I Know About Science I Learned from Comic Books.” He also wrote “The Physics of Superheroes” which Discover Magazine called the best science book of 2005.

I had the pleasure of meeting Kalakios at this years Comic Con where I attended his presentation “The Physics of Watchmen — or Why So Blue Dr. Manhattan.”

If you have ever seen Jim speak, you know he doesn’t give a dry science talk. He’s animated and funny and keeps the audience interested the entire time he’s speaking. But before we get into the details of Jim’s panel, let’s cover why he’s the authority to discuss the science of Watchmen.

Last summer Kalakios was speaking at an annual meeting of librarians when a woman from The National Academy of Sciences was setting up a program to match Scientists with Hollywood. She came to Jim and said, “Have you heard about this movie, Watchmen?”

Eventually this led to my going out [to the set] before they started filming. They wanted all sorts of information. What did a physics lab look like in 1957? What would it look like in 1985? What does a real scientist’s black board look like? How do Dr. Manhattan’s powers work? How would this function, how would that function?

The idea, as Watchmen production designer Alex McDowell explained to Kalakios, was that “we want to know what’s around the corner at the end of the hallway even if the audience never goes down that corridor.”

Kalakios visited the Watchmen set back in August of 2007, and they told him not to tell anyone that he was there before he left. At the end of September 2007 he ran into the some of his colleagues who asked what he was doing lately. Upon hearing that Kakalios had consulted on Watchmen, one of his scientist friends P.Z. Meyers was so excited, he posted an entry on his science blog announcing Kalakios’ set visit. Jim told us he thought, “I’d rather it not be out of the bag like this but who reads a science blog?” Two days later, it was on many different Web sites:

Here’s to WatchmenComicMovie.com who had a little article about it. And in the forum, one of the people who posted there had one of my favorite comments ever. He said, “We’ve also not discussed the fact that Snyder maybe trying his hardest to legitimize a giant squid alien. Perhaps that is the purpose behind his team of scientists, artists, film crew… Oh ****. Snyder is going to kill millions! Audiences will be massacred on opening night by the very sight of Snyder's monster!

After his introduction, Kalakios got down to business explaining some of the science behind Watchmen with the aid of a PowerPoint presentation. Sound boring? Well, it wasn’t. Jim injected humor into his entire presentation and had the crowd laughing the whole time.

He discussed Rorschach’s mask, whose ink bolt patterns swirl around not unlike a lava lamp, and pointed out that the patterns don’t actually match the wearer’s emotions and are just “meaningless black marks.”

He also talked about the feasibility of a craft like Nite Owl’s Owlship being able to fly:

If the Owlship is flying above the city skyline it has to use energy at a rate of 4.4 megawatts. That’s like forty-four hundred houses. The energy that a house uses is roughly a kilowatt or so. If you wanted to fly, at that energy rate, all the way to Antarctica, you’d require nearly 5000 gallons of gasoline.

Then Kalakios delved into the complex task of explaining the physics behind Watchmen’s only super powered character, Dr. Manhattan.

To explain this, what John Osterman (Dr. Manhattan) is able to do; I have to now teach you Quantum Mechanics. I have only 10 minutes, which gives me a problem… What do I do with the other 8 minutes? Because you are the most perfect audience to learn Quantum Mechanics because you are already genetically predetermined to accept impossible, unrealistic statements. This crowd will not only believe a man can fly, they will believe that a pair of glasses is the perfect disguise.

See, I told you he was funny.

He moved on to explaining the science behind Dr. Manhattan. First — why is Dr. Manhattan such a “master of matter,” as actor Billy Crudup who plays the Doc in the upcoming film put it. Kalakios explained that each atom in the human body vibrates at a tiny wavelength. When you add them all together it makes up your total wavelength for you as a person. However, because humans are made of so many different atoms their wavelength is so small that it is completely undetectable.

He postulated that, Dr. Manhattan is able to adjust his wavelength at will. So, since Dr. Manhattan has independent control over his quantum mechanical wave function, and can control his quantum field at will, he’s able to rescale his wave function allowing him to become 50 feet tall, duplicate himself or do other fantastic things.

But here’s the big question that has plagued forums and message boards for years: Why is Dr. Manhattan blue? Kalakios’ speculated an answer to that question:

Could be because of an electromagnetic shock front which gives off energy in the ultraviolet or the blue portion of the spectrum. He has to reassemble himself on the removal of his intrinsic field. He is constantly generating, pulling up stray electrons out of the ground to keep his atomic balance right. Some of these electrons are leaking off creating drain off radiation. By adjusting how fast they’re going he can adjust the hue and intensity of his glow.

He added that this radiation “drain off" would be a great way to help someone prove that long exposure to the Doc could give people cancer.

At one point Kalikios had the whole crowd howling when he brought up a slide showing a comic panel of the naked Dr. Manhattan. He explained:

By the way I want to point out one thing that the comic book got accurate. We physicists are extremely secure in our masculinity.

Stay tuned to this site for an exclusive one-on-one interview with James Kalakios where I get more details about his set visit and some answers to some pressing Watchmen questions.

8.18.08 Source: WatchmenComicMovie.com

Checkout the book's website

 

[.Rorschach.]

Great article:]

 

[The Dude]

Great article. It's always awesome when people put some science to explain some of these things.

 

[Bubastis]

It always puts a little pep in my step to know that there's some small chance that ANY of this could happen

 

[ProfeZZor X]

Despite my involvement in comics, I never knew about the Watchmen until I saw the trailer. And I have to say that I was completely blown away. My favorite character would have to be Dr. Manhattan, and it seems fitting that I would learn that much more about him on a real life scientific level.

 

[SLVRSR4]

I'd rather have Rorschach's changing fabric explained.

 

[Cousin Itt]

Awesome article.

 

[Shifty]

Here is the interview...

He Blinded Me With Science
An interview with physics professor and Watchmen movie consultant Jim Kakalios uncovers details of his work on the set

The following is a very candid interview with University of Minnesota physics professor, and Watchmen movie science consultant, Jim Kakalios. We’ve already given you a look into Jim's Comic-Con panel, so now, here’s a brief conversation we had right after his presentation:

The one thing that just stuck out at me — because somebody on my Web site mentioned it — is, they saw the trailer and they watched the scene where Osterman gets pulled apart. They got close up on the HD version, and on the left and right it reads “Intrinsic Field Generator A” and “Intrinsic Field Generator B.” They said, “Somebody on that set messed up, because it’s not an intrinsic field generator, it’s an intrinsic field subtractor — and there would just be one of them.

Kakalios: Right. Except that in some sense it’s kind of technobabble anyway. But one way, presumably, that they were trying to probe this was to generate intrinsic fields that would then create destructive interference with the internal… Now this is total ********, you understand, that I’m telling you here.

[laughter]

Well, I guess I’m wondering if you told them to put those signs up…

Kakalios: No. That was not me.

So, now you’re just going to explain how it could work?

Kakalios: My job is to go in with Marvel Comics No-prizes and somehow find a way to explain why it’s not a glitch.

Exactly! Well that would be good enough too. My friend would love to hear that.

Kakalios: What you need to do is generate… I can’t believe I came up with that… [chuckling] generate an intrinsic field which is out of phase with the actual intrinsic field and that would have the effect of removing the internal field. It’s like those sound isolation things…

Oh! You’re right. They generate white noise.

Kakalios: Well, it picks up the noise in the room and it generates sound that is out of phase and destructively interferes and it creates a sound-free environment.

Therefore removing the sound, so to speak…

Kakalios: Yes, but they are also creating sound to remove the sound.

A ha. Interesting.

Kakalios: Wow! [laughing] I’m gonna use that.

That’s why they pay you the big bucks.

Kakalios: [Chuckling] They don’t pay me the big bucks. It was just for fun. I’m just as much a fan of this as you guys. And I was vibrating like a gong when I…

So you had read Watchmen?

Kakalios: Oh yeah. And that was the thing. The National Academy of Sciences, when they got this request from Warner Bros., it was like, “Who are we going to ask that could talk to them about science but would know the comic material, and know the grounding of it, the respect for it?” And then my name popped up and they said, “Oh! Would you be interested?” And my wife said, “Are they paying you?” “No. But it’s Watchmen!” [chuckling]

So what’d they do, did they fly you to California?

Kakalios: Well, actually to Vancouver.

So you did get to visit the set?

Kakalios: Oh, no, no, I went to the set. I actually was in the Owlship when it was a wooden frame.

Oh, cool.

Kakalios: Yeah, it was very cool. And the people there were wonderful. You visited also, I know from your site. Everywhere were copies of the book. And Zack Snyder showed me those books that he’s now…This is not privileged information anymore, those art books where he had every shot and he had the clippings next to it, from the panel, or other artwork, clippings from magazines or other things at the time. That’s why I told my friend that he put it on his blog Pharyngula. I said, it’s going to be very accurate and it’s going to be excellent. Because you just had a sense. I mean who knows what’s going to happen and all. But especially after seeing this clip. And worse case scenario we’ll have to wait for the directors cut DVD that Warner Bros. forced him to trim. I didn’t realize that having Osterman knock over those milk bottles, from the Coney Island, the dream sequence during the atomic bomb. It’s going to be like Prego spaghetti sauce — “It’s in there.”

[Laughs] Exactly. There’s a lot of good stuff. So you went out to the set — and tell me what it was like doing the consulting? Did Alex McDowell in the art department call you in a room, take a lot of notes?

Kakalios: What they did actually, they said, “We don’t know. It might be actually in the special features.” So they actually taped a lot of the interactions.

Oh, Excellent.

Kakalios: I don’t know whether they’ll wind up using it or not but they wanted to know: What would a lab look like? We see Dr. Manhattan working on some device here. What would he be doing? What would he be using? There are some modifications that I’m not allowed to talk about, of the devices and stuff and its like, “How would that work?”

Some of it’s out. I can tell you what’s out and you could elaborate. We know that Dr. Manhattan is going to be working on World Universal Energy and that’s a new subplot that they’ve added. So, without telling anything, did you consult on some of that stuff? Or no?

Kakalios: A little bit, a little bit. Again, that’s kind of like saying ‘removing an intrinsic field.’ World Universal Energy is like having a heart reactor that you could put in your chest. But we talked a little bit about some other things. We talked about why would he be fooled by this or that? I said, well, if he was good at social interactions he wouldn’t have gone into physics in the first place.

True. Very true. Well, they show him being very socially awkward as Osterman in the beginning as well. Which helps.

Kakalios: Exactly.

So then we he becomes so divided from humanity it makes sense.

Kakalios: Yup.

I know you can’t say anything but I’m gonna ask you anyway because it will make everybody drool, do you know the ending? Because we know the endings changed, but did they give you that privileged information to know?

Kakalios: This is the honest to God’s truth. I saw a copy of the script before they even started shooting. Based on things that I’ve heard, even that’s changed. And so, that was the part that was still being worked on. I talked to them a little about some things. That was the part they were still kind of going through. So what was finally decided I’m actually not aware of. And I will probably discover it on March 6th like everyone else.

That’s funny, you couldn’t call Alex [McDowell] or Zack [Snyder] at Warner Bros. and say, hey, this is between you and me and I’ll keep it to myself.

Kakalios: I didn’t do that because I didn’t want to abuse… because I did want to keep it to myself.

[Laughing] I actually know what you mean. I almost feel the same way. I know what that’s like.

Kakalios: It was kind of funny because, seeing the people there, their dedication to doing such a good job and with the script… I think actually if you filmed every panel in order it would actually be a bad movie. I think you have to change some things around to make it exist as a film and not just a filmed version of the graphic novel. So given that, before I sat down with the script I said, Okay. I’m going to make some predictions of what got cut. Like Black Freighter. That was an easy one. And we know what’s going to be done with the Black Freighter, that’s not privileged information. An awful lot of stuff that I thought was going to get cut is in there. An awful lot. And at least was in the script that I read. Seeing early grumblings on your Web site, because I would go and I would lurk because I was really curious as to what people were saying with the Watchmen film, this was very early in the process. Now there’s a lot of attention obviously. I was biting my tongue. Saying, guys… even without giving anything away, relax. It’s really going to be good. But I just didn’t even want to get into that. And also they asked me not to. So for a long time I couldn’t…

Yeah. A lot you wanted to say, you couldn’t.

Kakalios: I couldn’t. So at this stage I ran into Zack Snyder and I had a chance but I would never think to actually say to him, now, by the way, what did you decide to do?

Yeah. It’s a question that I don’t even ask anymore because I think you’re right… Too many people ask me…

Kakalios: I was impressed that nobody asked it yesterday [at the Watchmen panel]!

I think they knew they weren’t going to get an answer. And I think they’re already knew… Zack has commented that there’s change, but he’s also saying don’t worry, it’s very faithful to the graphic novel and it’s not going to change the arc of the story or the meaning and how it ends. And a lot of people on the forum are saying, “Look. As long as [SPOILER OMITTED], we’re okay.” I’m okay. We could lose the squid. We always call it the “big space vagina.” It was a little silly looking too. So my theory is they just changed that. They changed the squid into something else. And it’s probably going to be really horrific looking and not comical. That’s my guess. But we’ll have to wait and see. I hope it’s not Dr. Manhattan’s Universal Energy Beam thing. We’ll see.

Kakalios: I really don’t know. I will say on the level of coolness, when they sent this information to me, when my wife called and said, “You got a FedEx package. What’s Veidt Industries?” [laughing] Because they were using that as the return address. I saved the FedEx bill of lading and the package. There was all this stuff that was going on that for most people, you could have said Watchmen and they wouldn’t have known. It’s kind of funny because if someone would know Veidt Industries, they would know it was Watchmen. If they didn’t know that they probably wouldn’t know Watchmen either. So you could just say “Watchmen.”

That’s true. Just say Watchmen Industries. They’ll think it’s a religious organization.

Kakalios: [Chuckling] Yes.

8.21.08 Source: WatchmenComicMovie.com
Add This!

 

[The Helix]

I'd rather have Rorschach's changing fabric explained.

Hopefully they do that next.

 

[Shifty]

Hopefully they do that next.

He discussed Rorschach’s mask, whose ink bolt patterns swirl around not unlike a lava lamp, and pointed out that the patterns don’t actually match the wearer’s emotions and are just “meaningless black marks.”

Doc Manhattan created the fabric, I can't remember if the book explains it or in the character bios in the Absolute Edition.

 

[The Helix]

Doc Manhattan created the fabric, I can't remember if the book explains it or in the character bios in the Absolute Edition.

I'd be interested to know if you can find out.

 

[sauronthegreat]

It was explained in the story. The part that deals with Rorschach, I don't remember exactly, but I think that that's the part where he is caught and sent to prison.

 

[Lobster Charlie]

They talk about it during Rorschach's sessions with his psychiatrist. Rorschach worked at a garment factory when he was 16, where he came upon a discarded dress that was two parts of latex with black liquid in between. The liquid is heat and pressure sensitive. He takes the dress home and cuts it and reseals it using special heating tools, but then stores it away because he couldn't think of what to do with it.

Later on, he finds out that the same girl who discarded the dress was also raped and murdered in front of her own neighbors. He then decides to fight crime.

 

[The ?]

Yeah, he's telling his shrink about his early life and how the dress was made from the Doc Manhattan line of clothing and how the italian girl who ordered it didn't want it because it was ugly.

the rest is history.

,

?

 

[The ?]

Uh yeah, what he said


,

?

 

[Bnightwing]

I have this book and I have read it ,its awesome for a good geek and its cheep for a great book!!

 

[I Am The Knight]

Am I the only one who thinks this Kakalios guy sounds like a major *****e?

 

[CaptainGenerica]

Am I the only one who thinks this Kakalios guy sounds like a major *****e?

Well I don't. Can't speak for anyone else. *shrug*



As for Rorschach's mask, I think the big question is how it stays symmetrical (which seems pretety impossible), rather than how do the blots move around (which can be imagined fairly easily).