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thievesgambit-a · 6 years

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headcanon 009: the science behind remy’s powers

thank @p-sychofreak for making me think about this harder and writing it down because i was mostly avoiding it because there’s a reason i decided to leave the physics department at my school.

so what comics say is “gambit’s powers is turning an object’s potential energy into kinetic energy and making shit explode” which is..........dumb because that’s really.....bullshit. I prefer to think of it as remy can accelerate the movement of atoms in inorganic material (and, without Sinister’s surgery, organic material, and can do it telekinetically, but the science still stands). and, in any case, this is what his “actual” counterpart, New Son or New Sun, has been described as being able to do (i.e. manipulating particles at a quantum level), so basically it’s canon and i’m right.

there’s some science shit under the cut, although i’m not going to explain everything because.......that would take a lot of effort (there’s a few aspects of chemistry and physics that I don’t feel like going into for a random ass headcanon post on tumblr rn). I’ll link some wiki pages at the end if you REALLY wanna know, and you can talk to me if you REALLY wanna talk it out. but basically: the greater the surface area, the bigger the explosion by an exponential factor rather than a linear one (but more time to charge, obviously).

so when electrons are excited, they jump from energy level to energy level (i.e. the rings around the nucleus in atom pictures), they release photons (i.e. light particles) and radiation. the increase in energy also releases some heat, which is true in any transfer of energy (see: headcanon 007). so what Remy is really doing when he “charges” an object is accelerating its atoms until electrons have bounced out of the energy levels in atoms and away from their nuclei, thus making the particles highly unstable and thus triggering an explosion on impact or after a specific amount of time (at which point the atoms break down and explode). Remy has developed an instinctual gauge on how much he needs to charge objects he’s used to (like his playing card) in order to explode in a certain amount of time.

this makes his explosions and objects he charges actually more nuclear in nature, because they depend on cascading electrons and the unstable reactions in the material. however, because the objects are so small, I wouldn’t really say the amount of radiation is very dangerous--and I really wouldn’t say Remy is dangerously radioactive, himself. yeah, he seeps radiation, but honestly, so do the rest of us. his is just minutely greater than everyone else’s.

anyways. so that’s what his power is doing. obviously, there’s some magic mutant bullshit in there, because I for one have never heard of scientists trying to heat objects so much that they explode.

I also believe that, the greater the surface area of the object he is charging, the greater the explosion--and the strength of the explosion grows exponentially rather than linearly. that is to say, an object that has twice the surface area of a playing card might have quadruple the explosion strength at full charge (this is just an approximation/example).

in idealized black bodies, which are objects that absorb all radiation and energy, their heat and radiation levels increase exponentially depending on their surface area (and later drop off after a certain frequency in the applied wave is reached). the general equation for this is referred to the Planck’s law. most metals can be considered black bodies--although not pure ones, since there’s usually random shit in them. but, you know that metal spoon that heats up when you leave it in your soup for too long, or how your bowls get hot if you leave them in the microwave for a while? black body radiation.

anyways, you can think of Planck’s law as describing how many photons an object is giving off, or how much energy the object is giving off in the form of radiation. the more energy you put in, the more radiation you get. as you can see from the helpful example curves Wikipedia provides, the growth and decay are exponential (which can also be seen clearly from the units and the equation provided, themselves).

notice that the final units of the radiation (i.e. Bν) of the blackbody have inverse unit meters squared (i.e. the area of the object). "unit” refers to 1 of something--in this case, 1 square meter of the object. depending on the frequency, wavelength, and other factors of the energy going into the object, its power can change. that means that, for two square unit meters of the item, the power is doubled, and for three, tripled, etc.

but remember that the equation itself is exponential, which means we have a (f3/2(x))(SA-1), where SA is the surface area (to the inverse, because that's where the units go) and f(x) is some function that is raised to an exponential (i.e. Planck’s law). clearly, then, the ultimate function is exponential in nature. because the greater the area, the less the ultimate explosion, Remy needs to put in more energy and power to get the same amount of explosion--but then again, since it's a greater surface area, usually it can hold more energy, and he continues to increase the radiation and instability in the object. because electrons tend to react off of each other at an exponential rate releative to how much of them there are, the power increases exponentially as well.

if you look at the Wiki, the growth isn’t infinite--which is great, because that would break physics on a couple of levels that I won’t get into. so Remy instinctively has the ability to use the appropriate level of power or just below it so he does not reach that drop off point, although he does not consistently hit the peak radiation levels either. and, with objects he is less familiar with, he is more likely to fuck up the amount of energy he has to put in.

obviously, this is all pseudo science and some bullshitting on my part, because on some level I don’t want to think too hard because it’s fucking mutant superpowers and this will never happen in real life and trying to explain it scientifically is a dumb idea to me because like this isn’t even science but if it was kinda sciencey then this is the shit I would say.

if you’re a physics or chem person and see all the shit that’s bullshitted in this don’t @ me like i know. i don’t feel like rationalizing it it’s fucking comics dude let me live.

#❛ ♠ ⁞ it’s all in the cards — headcanons #i also haven't done physics in like 3 years b/c i left that department for writing #b/c writing is easier LMAO #anyways i didn't take higher level quantum so don't attack me

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