Black Bolt: The Inhumans’ King and Propulsion System

Marvel’s Death of the Inhumans #1 is significant for many things, most of which we’re not going to spoil here. But perhaps the most science-y thing that we can discuss is something right near the end, which isn’t one of the major, major revelations.

Oh, and by the way, Death of the Inhumans #1 is probably still on the shelves at your local comic shop, or is available, digitally, at Comixology.com. 

Just before the end of the issue, as the bodies have hit the floor, Black Bolt and the Inhumans need to get to New Arctilian (their home in the Liebnitz crater on the moon) as fast as possible. Problem is, they’re…somewhere far, far away. So far away, that Lockjaw can’t even teleport them – they won’t be within range for 15 minutes at their current speed. They need to get closer. Quickly.

It’s up to Black Bolt. He signs to Crystal, “Get to the bridge. Brace for jump.” Crystal’s response is a knowing, “Oh, God.”

In the following pages, we see Black Bolt go to the engine room of the Inhumans’ ship, where there’s a specialized seat. The Inhuman king straps himself in, pushes a button to open a portal among the exhaust bells of the engines, exposing him to open space. And then, he says one word: “Go.”

The ship is shown zooming away. Crystal, Karnak and Gorgon are shown to be strapped into seats and clearly suffering from a massive acceleration (Karnak of all people gets a “RGNNN” out and has a bloody nose…just saying, if Karnak is complaining, that’s a serious acceleration). Shortly, Karnak says they are within range for Lockjaw to teleport to New Arctilian, and so he goes.

What Lockjaw finds, and what happens to him once he gets to New Arctilian…that’s for you to find out in the issue.

Let’s talk about pushing a spacecraft and what happens when you do.

Normally, the push of any rocket or spaceship comes from its engines, or motors. In this case, it was the force of Black Bolt’s voice. Okay, okay – there’s a lot of comic book science going on here. Black Bolt’s power is a “quasi-sonic scream” that produces a force…something to do with an unknown particle interacting with ambient electrons, according to the Marvel.com wiki entry. As for the how – total comic book science, but let’s look at the result: a force that rapidly pushes the Inhuman’s ship along the path to get them closer to New Arctilian.

Not an Optimal Passenger Experience

Why did Crystal, Gorgon and Karnak get bloody noses and discomfort? Einstein’s Equivalence Principle – an accelerating frame of reference is equivalent to a gravitational field. In other words, what objects/people in an accelerating frame of reference (the ship) feel is the same as if the gravity increased. In this case, the “push” is towards their backs, not down. You’ve certainly felt this before when a car moves very fast, or a thrill ride takes off suddenly. It’s what Indiana Jones felt at the start of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull when he was in the rocket-powered sled. You may have forgotten about that movie, but your physics teachers haven’t.  

Since we’ve seen the characters walking around in the ship, we can assume that there’s some kind of artificial gravity going on – even though they live on the moon, they were born on earth, so I’m going to assume that they live and travel at normal earth gravity. They’re not weightless. Something is pulling them down towards the “floor” or a vertically-oriented ship. In their seats, their Inhuman butts are being pulled down as ours are, under normal earth gravity.

And then Black Bolt does his thing.

For the three Inhuman passengers, suddenly their seats are pushing forward on them, and the internal organs are pushing against each other, headed towards their backs. For humans who do this, small, delicate blood vessels, like those in the eyes and nose will tear, internal organs will be damaged, and smaller bones can break.

We live with gravity, which is constantly acting on us with an acceleration of 9.8 m/s^2. That’s one “g.” Multiples of 1g – what is commonly called G-force, even though it’s not really a force, are just multiples of 9.8 m/s^2. If you’re accelerating horizontally at 39.2 m/s^2, you’re experiencing 4g’s. Everything, every part of you would feel 4 times heavier. Karnak’s arm for instance – Karnak weighs around 150 lbs, and in an average human, the arm is about 5.7% of total body weight. 5.7% of 150 lbs is 8.6 lbs. If he tried to lift it while under acceleration, Karnak would find that his arm felt like it weighed 34.4 lbs.

The Inhumans in the ship are victims of the Equivalence Principle – the increased acceleration they’re feeling in the horizontal direction is just like feeling increased gravity. Kudos to writer Donny Cates and artist Ariel Olivetti for putting the passengers in familiar-looking crash couches that support their bodies under a high-g acceleration. Oh, and this type of acceleration provides “eyeballs in” horizontal g-forces, meaning that the feeling is that someone is pushing your eyeballs into your skull. This is, of course, in opposition to the g-forces felt in a sudden stop, which are termed “eyeballs out” – because that’s what your eyeballs…do.

Humans in this type of setting can’t lift their hands very well, or move all that much (as fans of The Expanse know). But these aren’t humans – these are Inhumans, and they’re tougher than us. Much tougher. What kind of acceleration (and gravity equivalent) would cause them to get bloody noses? Probably a big one.

Let’s check in with Black Bolt, who’s playing the role of the rocket engine.

Black Bolt: Inhuman Rocket

As I mentioned earlier, there’s a lot of stuff to ignore about Black Bolt using his “quasi-sonic scream” to push a spaceship forward. A lot. But what can’t be ignored is that…it worked. I’ll leave it to future comic book scientists to figure out how it all worked, but it worked. So let’s talk about rocket engines.

Rocket engines are reaction engines, called such thanks to providing the reaction of Newton’s 3rd Law – every action force has an equal reaction force in the exact opposite direction. In regular rocket engines, and this is really simplifying things, the burning fuel produces exhaust gasses which are pushed out the back of the engine. The gasses, following Newton’s 3rd Law, push back on the rocket. Need to go faster, push the exhaust gasses out harder, and they’ll push on your rocket harder. With no atmosphere to fight against in space, you’ll gain speed…quickly if it’s a large force.

How much force was Black Bolt providing by saying the one word, “Go?”

No we’re totally guessing, but the calculation to do so is really easy, so if you don’t like my guesses, you’re free to make your own.

We need Newton’s Second Law of Motion for this one: F = ma: the force needed to move a mass (m) is equal to the mass multiplied by its acceleration.

The ship was accelerating – it’s acceleration must have been really high for the Inhumans to feel it like they did. We can make some guesses there – but we don’t know the mass of the Inhumans’ ship. There are ways to make a ballpark guess about this, if we want to make some assumptions about its materials and volume, and frankly, this ship was made by non-humans out of the type of material that they use for making ships for interstellar travel, so I don’t. Let’s just base a guess on other science fiction ships. The ship is only shown in full once, and it’s fairly big. What we do we do?

Compare it to a Star Wars ship – no other fandom has so completely and obsessively detailed the universe of their collective fandom (for better or worse). I’m basing the Inhumans’ ship on an MC 80 Mon Calamari Star Cruiser, Home One. It seems to fill about the same volume as I’m looking at it. Again – don’t like it? Pick one that you feel works better or shave down some of the mass to suit. An intrepid fan has roughed up some believable numbers, and from that, we get a mass of 253 trillion kilograms.

Okay – that’s crazy high, but go with me.

What acceleration did Black Bolt provide if the ship’s mass was that big number?

At the start of a roller coaster with a linear induction motor, passengers can experience up to 4-5 g’s without discomfort. Experiments have demonstrated that untrained humans can withstand 17 g’s of eyeballs-in horizontal g’s without loss of consciousness. How much acceleration would cause an Inhuman severe discomfort and a bloody nose that we’re seeing? Let’s crank it – to 50 g’s. Let’s say that 50 g’s is where Inhumans are feeling it. As always, if you’re not feeling it, feel free to use your own number.

Back to Karnak’s arm for a second – 8.6 lbs x  = 430 lbs. His arm would about three times heavier than his whole body. “RGNNN” indeed.

50 g’s is 50 times the acceleration of gravity, 490 m/s^2. That’s just the acceleration at which the ship was moving. How much force did Black Bolt provide to get it moving at that acceleration?

F = ma

F = (2.54 x 1011 kg)(490 m/s^2)

F = 1.2 x 1014 Newtons

(Newtons are the unit of force)

A Saturn V rocket provided only 34.5 million (3.5 x 107) Newtons. Don’t fall into the exponent trap – Black Bolt’s force isn’t around twice that of a Saturn V just because the exponents are 7 and 14. Black Bolt’s force is about 3 million times more than a Saturn V rocket.

And Now, The Silly…

As I’ve been saying there’s a lot that needs to be ignored because it’s straight-up comic book science in here…but there are some interesting bits to this scene in regards to Black Bolt and Marvel’s characters in general for those that want to totally fanboy/fangirl out about this. Don’t get me wrong – I really dig the idea of Black Bolt using his “quasi-sonic scream” as propulsion in theory, but (problems aside), there are consequences.

1. This little throwaway scene may have been the largest demonstration of Black Bolt’s power ever shown. Sure, it’s been talked about that Black Bolt’s scream can shatter mountains, but in this – nothing was shattered, something big was moved. And of course, that force would make short work of large, geologic features. And as you can see in the panel, the “Go” was in a small font, indicating what…a whisper? I’m not saying that this one scene shows Black Bolt as being the most powerful character in the Marvel Universe, but I’m certainly not not saying it, either.  
   

   Like a rocket. Seriously – it is. Image – Marvel

2. The other consequence that has me thinking here is that with this scene, Marvel has finally copped to the notion that Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion is a thing with characters who project stuff from their heads. Two characters I’ve always wondered about with this were Black Bolt and the X-Men’s Cyclops. Equal and opposite forces and all – blast someone with the force of your eye beams or your sonic scream, and an equal force has to be pushing back. Cyclops and Black Bolt must have the strongest necks in the Marvel Universe. As anyone who’s ever had whiplash can tell you, your head wants to rotate on your neck when a force is applied to it. The backward force on Cyclops’ eyes or Black Bolt’s mouth should push their heads backwards, but these two tough heroes (and everyone else who has these kinds of powers) hold their heads steady. That’s serious neck strength. After all, that’s how Black Bolt got the ship to move – he sent a force out, and that same force pushed back on him, in the chair (or, more specifically, against his jaw and mouth). That force, let’s just say, on his head, was what pushed the ship. 

And his head wasn’t mush as a result. Dang, Inhumans are tough.

For more: 

The Physics of Accelerating Spacecraft in The Expanse

Basics of Moving Around in Space

The Physics of Star Trek (excerpt)

May the Force = mass x acceleration

The Jump to Light Speed is a Real Killer

How Fast do Spacecraft Travel in The Expanse?