He Watches the Watchmen
Science fiction/superhero fans are on tenterhooks waiting for the imminent release (in a couple of weeks) of the long-awaited film adaptation of the Watchmen graphic novel. I've been reading it the last few days, and man, is it an impressive piece of fiction. Dark, disturbing, unrelenting in its depiction of a doomed society, yet with glimmers of hope here and there to ward off any bitter aftertaste.
I won't bore you by rehashing the premise; you can learn all you need to know right here. Suffice to say, it deals with a group of retired (and deeply flawed) superheroes who regroup when their former members start getting picked off one by one, to try and save the world from nuclear Armageddon -- or to save humanity from itself.
The tagline for the movie is catchy: "They watch over us. But who watches them?" When it comes to the science behind the superheroes, the answer is Jim Kakalios, a physics professor at the University of Minnesota and author of The Physics of Superheroes. When the National Academy of Sciences' Science and Entertainment Exchange -- then still in its pilot phase -- was looking for a good technical consultant for the film, Kakalios was an obvious choice. Who better to consult on a movie about the science of superheroes than someone who literally wrote the book on the subject.
And yes, there is lots of science in Watchmen, most notably Dr. Manhattan, a nuclear physicist who got disintegrated in a nuclear accident (oopsie!) and somehow figured out how to rearrange his atoms into some semblance of a human form. Oh yes, he can teleport, and manipulate atomic structure at will. But that's just one example. There's science in just about everything if you look for it. Check out this YouTube video the university just released, in which Kakalios gives the skinny on the science:
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