“There are a couple lines in Thor saying that magic and science get to a point where it’s not clear what distinguishes them. And I think we’re continuing that in Doctor Strange.”
This is a quote from Kevin Feige, Marvel Studios head, in an interview about their new film Doctor Strange.
Marvel often uses legitimate science and magic alongside each other in their films so that they become one in the same. Everything in Doctor Strange can be explained scientifically. Well, how then does one explain light shields and upside down cities? . Doctor Strange transforms from a man of science to a man of faith and traverses both worlds. He himself doesn’t really understand what is happening.
All is made possible and can be explained through quantum mechanics. Ever since the beginning of the 20th century, certain things are simply accepted as foregone conclusions. For example, when something falls, it goes on the floor. Push something to the right, and it moves to the right. These are all known as Fundamental Laws Of Nature.
Starting with the basics, subatomic particles such as electrons and neutrons are the building blocks of atoms. In 1909, Albert Einstein introduced the wave duality of light. This is the theory that light sometimes acts as a wave but other times acted as a particle like an election or a proton. Imagine a surfer waiting for a wave to ride. The waves cause the surfer to bob up and down as they stay in the same position and don’t follow the wave. Particles behave similarly. Energy moves through them but don’t move the particles. Such is the difference between waves and particles. A particle has mass and other measurable properties while waves don’t usually need to move through another medium. This is why no one can hear you scream in space: there is no air for the sound waves to move through.
Moving back to light, it possesses energy and momentum. Light has the properties of particles, but has no mass. This doesn’t follow normal logic and suggests that light is both a particle and a wave. This paradox forced scientists at the time to reevaluate physics. In 1929, Gilbert Lewis named these particles photons. This is where the concept of quantum mechanics was born.
One might wonder why the history of science lesson? It is because this is the science behind Dr. Strange’ powers! He uses light as a weapon as well as a shield to repel objects. How can this be? In fact, one can move objects purely with light. It works the same way that wind keeps a kite in the air or pushes a sail boat. Light can work in a similar fashion. Light has momentum. For example, solar cells are being moved using light. The light and photon particles coming from the sun hit the surface and the momentum slowly pushes it forward. This works well because there’s no friction in space.
Photons aren’t limited to moving matter: they can also create matter. Objects made from massless light particles? That might seem to be improbable, but in a recent study, Harvard scientists managed to coax photons to bind together creating molecules. “They created a special medium in which photons interacted so strongly that they began to act as though they had mass and bonded together.” The end result was LIGHT creating small CRYSTALS.
With Doctor Strange, we just see this on a massive scale. The film is filled with crystals. When the doctor first meets the ancient one, he walks through a crystal like pattern. When photonic light tangles with the air, properties of the atom get passed on to the photon creating solidified light. Light crystals may seem to be a creation of science fiction, but they have actually occurred in the laboratory. In 2013, a group of scientists from Princeton University created solidified crystals purely from light. They did this by the process that involves fixing the particles of light known as photons in a single spot, freezing them permanently in one place.
Moving on to the most improbable part of the film: buildings colliding with each other! The movie explains this by telling the viewer that “we harness energy and shape reality”. Energy is harnessed with protons to shape reality. Nothing has actually changed except for the viewer’s perception of reality. Much like the slight of hand in a complex trick, the magician in just shaping the onlooker’s reality to make one believe the impossible.
How does Doctor Strange change the moviegoers’ perception of reality to make a city sitting on its side possible? This is done with fractals which are geometric patterns that repeat infinitely into smaller and smaller sizes. One can see similar examples in nature like a Romanescu plant with its identical pattern on all sides or a peacock’s identical feathers.
Fractals are prevalent throughout the movie and explain how Dr. Strange manages to implement his most impressive tricks. What causes natural recurring fractals? Crystals. Crystals create recurring images which can approximate the look of an upside down or sideways city. They appear as such through the same refractive repeating images that can be found in a crystal. They aren’t reality, just a perception of what reality is.
The science fiction present throughout the film is actually based upon real theory and plausible science. This is for me what makes the film so fascinating and actually allows the spectator to suspend belief. Who is behind this real life science? Adam Frank, Professor Of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Rochester. For me, he is the true magician behind Dr. Strange.