Superheros and the science of fantasy

In a kick off event to the American Physical Society meeting taking place in Boston this week, the College of Science invited James Kakalios of the University of Minnesota to make physical sense of some very improbable superhero phenomena. I was bummed to miss it, but my colleague Greg St. Martin went. Here’s the piece he wrote for the News@Northeastern.

Apparently he discussed the real reason for Gwen Stacy’s death in Spiderman and how the Fantastic Four’s costumes enable their superpowers….I guess that wasn’t just fantasy after all?

I probably have to check out one of Kakalios’ books to make myself feel better about missing it. I wonder if he talks about Battlestar Galactica in there at all….Starbuck certainly borders on the superhero identity, if you ask me, and I still have a lot of questions there.

UPDATE! Watch the lecture (click once to pause; double click to play):

 

Photo: Mark Anderson, “Superman Card Game by Whitman (1978) – Superman” December 14, 2009 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution