Spider-man's magical snake

Ernő Rubik is one of the best known puzzle creators of the last 45 years: his best known puzzle, the Rubik's cube, was invented in 1974 and then marketed first as Hungarian Magic Cube in 1977 and then as Rubik's Cube in 1980. Rubik designed a second puzzle, dates to 1981, also based on the same principle of the Cube. The puzzle also had an exceptional testimonial, Spider-Man, in a one-page story: The mystery of the museum snakes. During the story, Spider-Man used the puzzle as the best trap to catch a gang of thieves.
But what is this new puzzle? Let's read it in the words of its creator:

The flying Batman

Comics' authors, and more generally those who write about fiction (but not only them), are the modern Scheherazade of One Thousand and One Nights. This comparison is very fitting for Detective Comics #1027 which celebrates at the same time #27, where Bob Kane and Bill Finger's Batman made his debut, and the 1001th issue of the magazine dedicated to the Caped Crusader, so you understand the initial comparison.
I'm not here, though, to write you why Detective Comics's 1001 releases with Batman (if you want to, follow note⁽¹⁾), but to seize the opportunity and talk about Batman's physics.

The greatest shapeshifter in the world

In the third episode of Season 3, Supergirl and J'onn J'onzz go to Mars, the red planet.

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How to become a superhero

from Amazing Fantasy by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko

We analyze a collaboration network based on the Marvel Universe comic books. First, we consider the system as a binary network, where two characters are connected if they appear in the same publication. The analysis of degree correlations reveals that, in contrast to most real social networks, the Marvel Universe presents a disassortative mixing on the degree. Then, we use a weight measure to study the system as a weighted network. This allows us to find and characterize well defined communities. Through the analysis of the community structure and the clustering as a function of the degree we show that the network presents a hierarchical structure. Finally, we comment on possible mechanisms responsible for the particular motifs observed.

Gleiser, P. (2007). How to become a superhero Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment, 2007 (09) DOI: 10.1088/1742-5468/2007/09/P09020 (arXiv)

The Marvel Universe as a real social network

Cover of the first number of Marvel Team-Up, comic book dedicated to the collaborations between Marvel heroes

We investigate the structure of the Marvel Universe collaboration network, where two Marvel characters are considered linked if they jointly appear in the same Marvel comic book. We show that this network is clearly not a random network, and that it has most, but not all, characteristics of "real-life" collaboration networks, such as movie actors or scientific collaboration networks. The study of this artificial universe that tries to look like a real one, helps to understand that there are underlying principles that make real-life networks have definite characteristics.

R. Alberich, J. Miro-Julia, & F. Rossello (2002). Marvel Universe looks almost like a real social network arXiv arXiv: cond-mat/0202174v1

The shield of Captain America

posted by @ulaulaman #physics #chemistry #superhero #CaptainAmerica

After the releasing of the movie Captain America: The first Avenger in 2011 by Paramount Picture, Suveen N. Mathaudhu, the Program Manager responsible for Synthesis and Processing of Materials at the U.S. Army Research Office in Durham, NC, written a brief article, The Making of Captain America's Shield (pdf), where he try to understand if today we have the ability to construct the Captain America's shield. Thanks to Lynne Robinson⁽¹⁾ and the Avengers movie, Mathaudhu and his little review returned to the attention of people.
First of all we try to resume the story of the Cap's shield. The first comics shield was a triangular shield but starting from Captain America Comics #2 (april 1941), Cap was equipped by the most famous circular shield:

A concavo-convex metal disc approximately 0.76 m in diameter, it is virtually indestructible and has remained his most constant shield over the decades.

Following Captain America #255 (march 1981), the shield was presented to Rogers by president Franklin Roosevelt⁽⁶⁾.

It is created by the scientist Myron MacLain during some experiments with vibranium, an extraterrestrial metal introduced in Fantastic Four #53 with the ability to absorb vibrations⁽⁶⁾. A useful utilization of the vibranium was made by Thor in Avengers #68 in order to contain the explosion of Ultron-6⁽⁵⁾.

During the same saga (started on Avengers #66), MacLain presented for the first time the adamantium⁽⁶⁾. This metal was created (or founded) by MacLain some years after the creation of Cap's shield: this last was made by an alloy of vibranium and steel with an unkown catalyst; so MacLain try to reproduce that experiment and he accidentaly created adamantium, like the same metallurgist telled in Captain America #303.