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Physics at San Diego Comic-Con International - The Dayside

, And other comic books, Comic-Con now encompasses TV, film, anime, manga, toys, card and video games, e-comics, and novels.

I went to Comic-Con for the first time last month—as a member of the press. Besides enjoying the spectacle and learning from attendees about their enthusiasms and from vendors about their products, my goal was to hunt for physics in and around the conference hall.

Some Comic-Con physics lies more or less in plain view. At least two notable comic-book characters are physicists. Bruce Banner, who morphs into the Incredible Hulk, designed and oversaw the testing of a gamma bomb, a fearsome physics-based weapon. Charles Xavier, the X-Men patriarch, is the son of a nuclear physicist and earned a PhD in biophysics (in addition to PhDs in genetics and psychology). Attendees who strolled along aisle 2200 of the exhibit hall would have encountered the American Physical Society's booth, where six members of the Physics Central team , including Laser Girl, handed out free, physics-themed comic books.

Hidden physics

But I was more interested in less obvious manifestations of Comic-Con physics. At booth MZ 18, I found one—in the person of a Rebel Alliance fighter pilot, who was staffing the fan table of San Diego Fan Force , a club for the city's Star Wars enthusiasts.

The pilot, a young woman, turned out to be an engineer in real life. She works on the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. What struck me was how naturally our conversation passed from the meager merits of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace to the challenge of operating an IR observatory from a modified Boeing 747. The bridge between science fiction and science fact was, I think, her dedication to both.