- Magneto, I'm disappointed in you, man. You're one of the most
powerful mutants to ever live, and yet, you could be so
much more powerful if you simply looked into the science
of your own superpowers. You can do more than
levitate and pull iron out of abusive security guards' blood. Here are seven superpowers that
you may not have thought of. (uptempo electronic music) Magneto was created all
the way back in 1963 by Stan Lee and Jack
Kirby as Max Eisenhardt, a human mutant with the ability to generate and manipulate
magnetic fields. Now, unless you avidly read
X-Men comics, most of what you've seen Magneto do is move
metals around and levitate. But if Magneto can manipulate
magnetic fields, he has way more superpowers than just those. But first, magnetism, how does that work? Magnetism is a part of
electromagnetism, one of the four fundamental forces of the universe. This force binds electricity
and magnetism together such that changing an
electric field creates a magnetic field as
described by Ampère's law. And changing a magnetic field
induces an electric field as described by Faraday's
law of induction. Now what about magnets, how do they work? Down at the quantum scale, the motion of tiny charged particles like electrons creates tiny magnetic fields. The two are linked remember,
so just about all matter that you know of is
intrinsically magnetic, just of varying intensities. So for example, this marker
is what we call diamagnetic. In the presence of a magnetic
field, its tiny particles create a magnetic field that opposes the magnetic field it's inside. We consider these kind of
materials to be non-magnetic. On the other hand, if you
take a ferromagnetic material, like this piece of iron, in the
presence of a magnetic field all of its tiny magnets align to create the kind of magnet that you're used to. (minimalist electronic music) What Magneto can do in
the comic books and movies and TV shows is then based on
the link between electricity and magnetism and the interaction of these forces and fields with materials. What he can do is impressive
and even kind of science-y. But now that we know the
basis for his superpowers, we can give him even more. (mumbles) So here are seven other
superpowers that Magneto gets simply from being the master of magnetism. Magneto is always moving so
slow, and that's because he has to use a ton of power to levitate over non-magnetic stuff. That is possible if you use a
crap-ton of magnetic fields, like this frog is experiencing. But there is a way he can
travel much, much faster. Magneto could go to any
pair of train tracks in the world and start running. Then, at some speed
according to Lenz's law and depending on the magnetic
field underneath him, he would begin to levitate like a magnetically levitated train. Then, he could create
alternating magnetic fields on the sides of him to accelerate him up to hundreds of kilometers per hour. If Magneto got clever,
he could put iron filings in thousands of pounds of putty. Then, as in this video, he
could use his magnetic fields and powers to animate that mass and make it a nearly indestructible
sticky goll-um beast. Having a power over
magnetism is really a power over electromagnetism and
electromagnetic radiation like visible light. So using his magnetic fields,
Magneto could bend light around himself to become
invisible whenever he wanted. Oh No! As we've learned an
electric field can create a magnetic field and vice versa. So facing a metallic enemy
like Colossus or Wolverine, Magneto could apply a huge
magnetic field around them which would induce an electric current to flow through one of these guys. Electric currents tend to make
stuff hotter when they flow through something. So at some point, as in this
video, the metal would melt, meaning that Wolverine's bones would turn straight into goo. Remember that one time Magneto ripped all of the adamantinum
out of Wolverine's body? Pretty cool. Literally boiling Wolverine's skin off because his bones are
melting, even cooler. If Magneto's magnetic
fields were strong enough, he could use them to force atoms so close together that they actually fused and released huge amounts of energy. We try to do the same
things with magnetic fields in experimental fusion reactors like you're seeing in this video. So Magneto could single-handedly
end the energy crisis. Or and stick with me here,
this gets a little complicated, technically Magneto
could create lightsaber! The end of the world may come in the form of a gamma ray burst, or a
meteor strike, or global warming. Or it could happen after
humanity is plunged into chaos following the loss of all
of the world's electronics. If Magneto used every ounce
of his powers, he may be able to disrupt the plasma flowing
along the intense magnetic field lines of the sun. If he could, then Magneto
could send a solar flare directly at Earth with
charged particles screaming at a million miles per hour impacting all of the world's electronics and creating electric currents inside
of them to fry them and send us back to the Stone Age. This is to scale. (yelling) Hey I just forgot all of
X-Men: The Last Stand. Nice. Everything that you are,
every thought you have, every desire, every personality
quirk that makes you, you, is more or less the result of
a storm of electrical signals thundering around the
neurons of your brain. And as we've learned
magnetic fields can alter electrical signals, so magnetic fields can mess with your mind. And we know this to be true
because we've studied it. It's called transcranial
magnetic stimulation, and it can move your limbs
without you willing them to do so as you're seeing in this video. We've also found that it can alter your brain chemistry and
help fight depression. And it can turn off
the parts of your brain that reason morally. This is in theory complete
control over body and mind, a power at least as strong
as Charles Xavier's powers. And Magneto has it. So according to science
Magneto should be able to do way more than just move
metal and levitate. He could travel like a high-speed train. He can melt Wolverine from the inside out. He could control your mind. And he could end the world. Seems that Max is even more powerful than we thought because science. You can't see it, but I'm levitating. I assure you. (upbeat electronic music) Thank you so much for watching. Follow me on Twitter @Sci_Phile
to suggest ideas for future episodes, on Instagram
where I'm now posting extra mini-episodes of Because Science. And if you have any more
science-y superpowers for Magneto put them in the comments below. Now this Saturday--shameless
plug--I am hosting the new MythBusters show, called
MythBusters: The Search. It airs Saturdays on the science channel. You can catch the second
episode this Saturday. There's explosions. What's incredible about
magnetism if you think about it, is that it cannot be fully understood without quantum mechanics. So when you see a magnet, it's only responding to magnetic
forces and attracting other things because of quantum mechanics. This doesn't happen in everyday life. We don't get to see how the universe works at the smallest scales. But things are only magnetic
because charged particles are moving around at the quantum
scale, and those line up with each other in the orbitals of atoms in just the right way,
so they don't cancel out. And then those atoms all
line up the right way in regions and materials, and
then regions and materials all line up the right way to
produce strong magnetic fields that we can notice at our scale. Magnetism is a window into the fabric of the universe,
into how it really works. And all of that you can get
from a refrigerator magnet. (bouncy electronic music)
