Sunday, May 15, 2005 Nightcrawler vs Newton & Einstein
There is a character in X-men named Nightcrawler who has the ability to teleport himself from one point in space to another. From the X2 movie, it seems like not only can he translate himself in space instantaneously, he can also ignore all the rules of Newtonian mechanics.
When Nightcrawler teleports a metre forward, how far did he move? Was it one metre relative to his previous position? Not necessarily. For all we know, he could have been moving at a hundred miles an hour (relative to an arbitrary point) the moment before he teleported. A more correct way of seeing this would be that he teleported one metre from his previous position in the inertial reference frame where he was stationary just before he teleported. For the not-scientifically-inclined, an inertial reference frame can be roughly explained as a point-of-view that is not accelerating.
According to Newton's Laws of Motion, an object that is not subjected to any force will continue moving with the same velocity (i.e. same speed and direction) - no matter viewed from any inertial reference frame. This is where Nightcrawler amazingly accelerates without any force applied to him. He can disappear while stationary and reappear somewhere else with a velocity (and angular velocity) greater than zero. This clearly violates the conservation of linear (and angular) momentum. He can also teleport great distances upwards, against gravity, meaning he just gained potential energy from nothing, violating conservation of energy.
It is as if Nightcrawler can choose to exit from his teleportation being stationary in a different inertial reference frame as the one he was in when he entered. If that is the case, then he is very powerful indeed. He can never die from falling off a building because before he hits the ground with enormous speed, he can just lose all his momentum by teleporting. He can also fight without even moving his limbs. He can be standing there one moment and the next moment, his whole body can be flying at his opponent at any speed he chooses when he teleports.
Applying Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, Nightcrawler's ability to change velocities without having to pay for it has profound implications. Nightcrawler can effectively accelerate himself to any speed, even close to speed of light or beyond. That means he can time travel. The instantaneity of his teleportation is also a kind of time travel since he effectively broke the light-speed barrier.
Of course ,the strangest part of his power is he can somehow appear in a place where there already is matter. Where did all the matter go? Did the air just disappear when he appears?
Naturally, we never get to see him time travel in the stories. Just like we will never see Magneto manipulate matter at the molecular level even though the primary force between virtually everything is electromagnetic. People with super powers always have limited imagination - or little knowledge of physics.
