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Is Iron Man 2's Home-Made Particle Accelerator Possible?
Iron Man 2 blew away the competition at the box office this
weekend, as audiences flocked to see the latest adventures of
billionaire Bad Boy genius, Tony Stark. And it didn't take our beloved
nerd-gassers long to weigh in on the
science of the fiction, with the most balanced analysis so far
coming from Brookhaven
physicist Todd Satogata, quoted in Popular Mechanics.
Specifically, there's the question of whether or not it's really
possible to build a particle accelerator in your own home with
sufficient power to create a new element.
The short answer: why yes, you can build your own particle accelerator. It's already
been done by physicist Michio Kaku, who built a
2.3-million-electron-volt accelerator (called a betatron) in his
parents' garage for his high school science fair project because he
"wanted to play about with antimatter." You know, the usual high school
hijinks. Kaku was precocious enough to catch the eye of Edward Teller,
who offered him a scholarship to Harvard and launched Kaku's physics
career.
WIDE
ANGLE: Dive into the realities of particle collisions with our special
coverage of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
The long answer is a bit more complicated, as Satogata's analysis
makes clear. The basic building blocks are a beam tube with a large
vacuum, charged particles, magnets to bend the beam, and radio frequency
oscillators, or RF cavities, to accelerate the particles. Based solely
on what's depicted on screen, Tony Stark seems to be missing RF cavities
(although they could be off-screen), and his magnets don't appear to be
large enough for maximum steerage.
There's also the question of where he's getting the juice to run his
homemade accelerator: on the order of 10 to 15 megawatts, enough to run
over 10,000 homes. "For Stark to run his accelerator, he's gotta make a
deal with his power company or he's gotta have some sort of serious
power plant in his backyard." I humbly suggest that if Stark can build a
tiny fusion reactor to operate his suit, finding the energy to run an
accelerator isn't his biggest problem.
No, Stark's biggest problem is creating that fictional new element.
There have been several new heavy elements created in particle
accelerators around the world in the last couple of decades, most
recently the
discovery of element 117, announced by a team of American and
Russian scientists just last month. But that team managed to synthesize
just six atoms of element 117 by smashing together isotopes of calcium
and a radioactive element called berkelium (equally rare) -- hardly
enough to power Stark's mini fusion tractor.
Furthermore, these heavy elements don't hang around very long; they
decay in a matter of milliseconds. What Stark creates is something far
more unique than just another new heavy element: he has apparently
discovered an element that lies within the so-called "island of
stability" in the periodic table. In general the heavier the element
created, the shorter its lifetime, because artificially synthesized
elements are unstable and decay immediately. But with the most recent
discoveries, those lifetimes appear to be lengthening once again,
tantalizing physicists with the notion that perhaps there is an
as-yet-undiscovered element that is both heavy and stable. And who knows
what wondrous properties such an element might possess, and what
exciting new applications we might find for it?
ANALYSIS:
Forget building a particle accelerator in your basement, can you build a
time machine out of a hot tub?
Okay, so while there's a real-world basis for this pivotal scene in Iron
Man 2, it's not yet something within the reach of our most
brilliant scientists. But our most brilliant scientists aren't Tony
Stark -- that's why he's a superhero; he can achieve what mere mortals
cannot. Emory University's Sid Perkowitz, author of Hollywood
Science, explains:
The Reality of Iron Man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_i5pmyVxb8&feature=player_embedded#!
While the film naturally took some liberties with the details -- sci-fi
has the luxury of not having to pass peer review -- Marvel Studios
nonetheless cared enough about plausibility to consult with Mark Wise, a
theoretical physicist at Caltech. Wise met with producer Jeremy Latcham
and other members of the production team -- even bringing along a lucky
grad student for good measure -- to offer some insights specifically on the laboratory scene where Stark builds his homemade
particle accelerator and creates a new element.
Wise
was surprised by Latcham’s and the film crew’s interest in the actual
science, "I attempted to present the science in a way to the help the
movie, but still get a little science in," said Wise. "They wanted the
scenes to look good, but they also wanted elements of truth in what they
did, it was nice."
"They wanted to use the science to show what
it (a particle accelerator) would really look like and they also wanted
to do it in a way that was entertaining," said Wise. "They even wanted
to know the behind-the-scenes stuff -- stuff that you wouldn’t see."
During a follow-up visit to Marvel, Wise met with Latcham and the
film's crew while they were building the set in Tony Stark's lab. Wise
also had a chance to meet with the film’s director, Jon Favreau, and
view the set of scenes that he consulted on after they had been filmed.
"The scenes looked fine," said Wise, "I hope people enjoy the film."
Judging from its opening weekend box office receipts, I think people
enjoy the film very much. Here's hoping they also learn a bit of
real-world science from folks like Satogata and Perkowitz who approach
these "teaching moments" with the appropriate humor and light touch.
https://news.discovery.com/space/is-iron-man-2s-home-made-particle-accelerator-possible.html
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Leading image: Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) fires up his
home-made particle accelerator in the movie Iron Man 2 (Paramount
Pictures).
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