The OMG particle distorts time in ‘Fantastic Four’

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Reed Richards suggesting, in Fantastic Four #23, that magic obeys the inverse-square law, but Reed’s hypothesis was really just a side comment in the Ryan North-penned issue. The main plot of the two-issue story includes a huge amount of even more exciting physics, involving a stupidly fast cosmic ray of unknown origin, dubbed the “Oh my God” (OMG) particle. The OMG particle was so fast, it must have experienced an extreme amount of time dilation, the phenomenon described by Einstein in which the passage of time seems to slow down.

Other ultra-high-energy cosmic rays have been detected since the OMG particle was observed in 1991, but they’re so rare, I’d never heard of them before reading this issue. Luckily, North and artist Carlos Gómez have Johnny Storm give a good, brief, and hilarious breakdown.

To summarize Johnny’s summary, the OMG particle was an extraordinarily high-energy cosmic ray (yes, like what originally gave the Fantastic Four their powers). In other words, a very fast-moving particle (probably a proton) from space. Astronomers still don’t know for sure where it came from and how these things occur, but research is ongoing. 

Well, in Fantastic Four #23-24, North and Gómez imagine the OMG particle to be a tiny, proton-sized spaceship in which an alien escaped from a dying solar system (a la baby Superman escaping Krypton).

So, just how fast are these particles? The original OMG particle had an energy of 51 Joules, which means, if it was in fact a proton, it was traveling at a hefty 99.99999999999999999999951% of the speed of light. Why did Johnny say 99.99999999951%? I assume that North (understandably) didn’t want the letterer, VC’s Joe Caramagna, taking up all that space.

But those extra decimal digits make a surprisingly big difference.

As an object approaches light speed, it experiences time dilation — time passes more slowly for it — compared to other objects. The faster an object travels, the slower time gets. Einstein postulated and explained it all in his special theory of relativity, but it’s fairly hard to understand without good visuals.

While traveling at such high speeds, the alien in the OMG particle spaceship ages much slower than the rest of the universe. As the alien says in Fantastic Four #24, she’s traveled billions of years, but only aged mere seconds.

According to the special theory of relativity, the factor which determines how much faster “non-moving” people age relative to moving people is called the Lorentz factor, and this is where those extra 9’s after the comma come into play. The Lorentz factor corresponding to the actual speed of the OMG particle is approximately 320,000,000,000. Using the speed Johnny quoted — without so many 9’s — it’s 320,000.

In other words, at the real speed, for every second the alien in the OMG particle spaceship ages, the rest of the universe ages a whopping 320,000,000,000 seconds — or around 10,150 years. So, while traveling for a billion years in the universe, the alien would age about 1.14 days. More than mere seconds, but still an incredible difference. Using Johnny’s quoted speed, for every second the alien in the OMG particle spaceship ages, the rest of the universe would age 320,000 seconds, or only 3.7 days. All due to some missing decimal places!

Major Spoiler Warning! It’s time to talk about the conclusion of Fantastic Four #24.

During the climax of the two-issue story, Mr. Fantastic chases the alien back to her OMG particle spaceship, where they again shoot off into space at a stupidly fast, relativistic speed. Unfortunately, since the alien didn’t aim her ship at anything, they travel for the rest of the universe’s future to the end of time, in what Reed suggests is a handful of hours.

There’s no real consensus among scientists on how or when the universe will end. The earliest estimate seems to be around 20 billion years from now, but, it could take up to 100 trillion years. With the already mentioned speed of the OMG particle, traveling for 22 billion years would feel like about 25 days for Reed and the rogue alien, which is obviously more than just a handful of hours, but maybe the alien somehow managed to accelerate her ship to even faster speeds, making time even slower for them.

With Mr. Fantastic and the rogue alien traveling to the death of the universe, one has to ask: what happens at the end of time? Does something exist after our universe ends? What’s potentially out there? Those are metaphysical questions, outside the purview of natural sciences. In Fantastic Four #24, Reed encounters an all-powerful being in glowing light, who he apparently recognizes not as a god — but as a future version of his son, Franklin.

AIPT Science is co-presented by AIPT and the New York City Skeptics.