ASH/HCC: Coherent Super Stories #22 - In Vivo, Veritas

[Dave Van Domelen]

In article <i44054$sog$1 at usenet-its.stanford.edu>,
Andrew Perron  <pwerdna at gmail.com> wrote:
>On Thu, 12 Aug 2010 23:44:25 +0000 (UTC), Dave Van Domelen wrote:
>
>>      "My trade name is Bacteriomage," the voice behind him replied.
>
>Actual on-panel appearance of Bacteriomage!  Woo!

     You will note he never actually appears on-screen, though.  Always a
voice from out of view.  Not an intentional thing, but amusing nonetheless. 


>>      "Pretty damned good," his opponent sneered, gesturing and sending a wave
>> of magnetic force into Balder's body.  The water in his body tried to get
>> away from the field, and the effect was like being hit by a baseball bat
>> wrapped in a blanket...dull, more pushing than hitting, but still something
>> that would've been hard to ignore even if he'd been in tip-top condition.
>
>Wait, what?  Does this work? @-@

     Yep.  Google for "levitating frog" to see videos.  Water is weakly
diamagnetic, which means it tries to exclude magnetic fields, and this will
result in a force on the water.  Iron in blood is not ferromagnetic, but
water in blood can be affected by a strong enough field.  The power
requirements to levitate a person would probably be enough to run a small
city, so it's not really practical in a "real world" setting, but compact
power supplies are a standard part of superhero technohandwave.
     Oh, and the "bat wrapped in a blanket" effect is not an inevitable
consequence of using diamagnetism for this, it just shows that the Dark
Brigade armor doesn't really focus the field tightly.  So a lot of water is
pushed on at once.

     Dave Van Domelen, notes that superconductors are to diamagnetic
materials what iron is to paramagnetic materials.