So – New Mutants #7.
Still out there on comic shop shelves, or digitally at Comixology.com. It’s one of the returns of a beloved series (and cast), spinning out of Jonathan Hickman’s revitalization of Marvel’s X books.
The team pretty much exists in two settings now – one group on earth, and one in Shi-ar space (at least for now). Yeah, it’s something that Roberto DaCosta (Bobby – a.k.a. Sunspot) just had explained to him by Dani Moonstar. No, literally. Page three. Dani spelled it all out for Bobby. It was all a little meta, but you know what, for this book, and for Bobby – it worked.
But for the quick dose of science that writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Rod Reis put in there – as the team returns to Chandilar with the rescued (kinda) Deathbird along with them, they encounter Sega, a lethal ball of gas, who’s also a death commando with the Shi’ar Imperial Guard.
As Sega is quick to explain, it’s a lethal ball of gas. One that’s contained in a pressure vessel. And it gets a bit of an attitude when Doug Ramsey and Karma explain the situation – the team has met and defeated the other Sir-ar Death Commandos.
Ah, but wait – these aren’t just any mutants. Karma and Doug quickly put the situation together for Sega.
What can you do to a living gas to make things uncomfortable? If a gas is living, it probably digs being a gas – all that freedom for its particles to move around, and all. Gas particles aren’t confined by intermolecular forces like liquid and solid particles are. As a solid, one can only imagine the freedom that being a living gas can give you. So how can you threaten a gas?
Take that freedom away.
And – okay, backstory on Doug, he’s a personal hero. Way back when he debuted in New Mutants #13 back in 1984, his mutant power was that he was really smart and could understand any code and language that he encountered, hence his codename, Cypher. It was also explained that while those “powers” seemed kind of meh, Doug was intellectually “gifted,” and being such thus made him a mutant.
Personal aside – as an awkward kid in the gifted program at my own school, this revelation made me feel a little special, like I was part of something larger, and that it was going to be okay. Yeah – that’s the true power of the X-Men.
Anyway, Doug apparently remembers his chemistry, physics and phase diagrams, given his threat to Sega:
Sega doesn’t offer any more trouble after that.
Luckily for the team, Doug’s understanding of gas behavior at high pressures is spot on. What Doug is talking about can be seen easily on this phase diagram, below.
Every pure substance (elements, compounds) have phase diagrams that explain what they do under varying pressures and temperatures. The state of matter for any matter is a function of both variables.
Quick side note – the simplified general phase diagram above is for pretty much anything except water. That line between solid and liquid phases up there? That leans to the left for water, and from that you can tell that the solid form of water (ice) is less dense than the liquid (water), which means ice floats. That’s a good thing. But that’s not what we’re talking about here.
Oh – but phase diagrams are tons of fun to figure out what state things would be in at different temperatures and pressures than where we encounter them. When you know your way around the, you can use them to explain why liquid water boils in space at (and below) body temperature. Fun stuff (you don’t blow up).
So anyway – what Doug was threatening Sega with can be shown by a vertical line. Temperature is on the x-axis, pressure is on the y. Sega is at a constant temperature (we can assume the room temperature where Doug and Mirage encounter it), and Doug is threatening to crank the pressure, in other words, go up on the y-axis. Let me throw down a sample line on the phase diagram to illustrate.
See? If we assume a temperature somewhere, say, mid x-axis, we’re good. While we don’t know what pressure Sega’s chamber is set at, it’s easy to see that by increasing pressure on the gas (Sega), Doug would take it from a gas into the liquid phase via condensation – all the while maintaining a constant temperature.
As Doug threatens, if he’s a really bad boy, he could keep cranking the pressure, and Sega would pass from a liquid state into a solid state via solidification of some form, most likely a crystallization.
The threat has the desired effect on Sega.
So yeah – sure Doug is supersmart, and off the charts in the hard sciences, but don’t be fooled. You might not remember it, but if you’ve been through a high school chemistry (and maybe physics) class, you had this. It’s some pretty basic stuff.
It’s just a good day when phase diagrams get a quick shout-out, however obliquely, in comics.
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