As far as life-ending gestures go, the snap was always kind of goofy. And don’t tell me the snap was just a visual way to depict Thanos’ Infinity Gauntlet-powered action. He literally had to snap his fingers! Captain Marvel holds his fingers apart to try to keep him from rubbing his gauntleted digits together! The finger-snap mattered, for no justifiable reason other than that we now get to refer to the Snapture, and that portmanteau is good.
But it also was just silly. You have infinite power, you just do what you want. You don’t have to act like you’re kicking off a jam session. And besides that? It’s impossible to snap one’s fingers while wearing a giant metal glove. Science has proven this.
Yes, okay, technically Thanos’ exact snap cannot be replicated. Not even scientists have access to a tacky and overlarge gauntlet made of Uru metal, forged by dwarves and bedazzled with Infinity Stones. But they do have the ability to study how exactly our fingers work. In a recent paper, a group of researchers determined that “ultrafast snap of a finger is mediated by skin friction.” Ars Technica spoke to the researchers, who were partly inspired to do the work after seeing Avengers: Infinity War.
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The paper gives a lot of detail about the mechanics of the finger snap, but it basically boils down to this: a snap requires skin, which creates the perfect combination of friction and pressure. Or, as the paper’s abstract puts it, “the compressible, frictional latch of the finger pads likely operates in a regime optimally tuned for both friction and compression.” Metal-clad fingers—Thanos’ or Tony Stark’s, for that matter—just don’t cut it.
This research isn’t just about proving that Thanos couldn’t have done what he did with his big metal hand; it’s also relevant to soft robotics, where the findings may be useful for “improving the manipulative capabilities of robotic systems.”
Yes, I know: It’s science fiction! (Or science fantasy.) They can do whatever they want! Maybe the power stone creates friction! I don’t know! Science doesn’t know! But digging into how movie storytelling works (or doesn’t) is one of the great joys of being a nerd. Give me a thousand papers on the improbability of the snap or essays on the absurdity of data storage in Star Wars: Rogue One. I will read (or at least skim) them all.
And maybe next time a big purple guy wants to thoughtlessly destroy half of all life, leaving the rest of us with biological chaos and stomachaches, he can find a more impressive and practical way to do so.
I suppose he could have just given the universe a big metal middle finger…
Nevermind the mechanics of finger-snapping while begloved and bedazzled, it was stupid because his stated purpose was to eliminate scarcity by killing half of all life. Well, guess what the only thing life eats is? Other life! It made far more sense in the comics because it was just a nihilistic attempt at romancing actual capital-D Death.
He just used the reality stone to make it so snapping his finger was possible regardless of handcoverings.
Duh!!
You know, I never thought about why he would need to snap his fingers to use the stones. There’s obviously a mental component to using the stones (nobody ever states their intention when using one), so why would a physical act be necessary?
Re: The Smithsonian article linked in the post – wouldn’t half of all human gut bacteria automatically get snapped out with the half of the humans that did? Why would people who continued to exist lose half of what they had? The rest of the points make sense, but that first part confuses me.
Also, I absolutely, positively know that for Plot Reasons(tm), Thanos had to wipe out about 50% of Earth, but if he really was doing 50% of all life in the universe, couldn’t there hypothetically be planets that were barely affected and planets that were pretty much completely wiped out? (You’ll have to forgive me for not quite remembering how some of this work; my main exposure to the Infinity Gems was, uh, the Capcom Marvel Super Heroes fighting game.)
If they had of stuck with the comics a little more, he would have had a flexible glove (cloth or something similar) and this would be a non-issue..
Thanos’s idea of killing half the living beings in the universe as a way to deal with population pressures is stupid, because it just buys a few decades anyway. At a growth rate of 2%, the population would be back to its pre-Snap levels in just 36 years, and now the Infinity Stones aren’t around anymore for him to repeat the trick.
@5 In the discussions after the movie snap, I mentioned the gut bacteria among other living things in the human body. People who survived the snap had diaherra among other problems for a loooong time. I imagine the sale of yogurt and other sources of the bacteria were through the roof for several years. They may have become the new drug sold on the street.
At the risk of diverting the conversation to “Thanos’s plan is stupid, for these logistical reasons,” which has been obvious to viewers since the outset: I would’ve been fine if the scripts had hung a lantern on it. Each time he announces his plan to a new team of heroes, they call him out on it, thereby demonstrating that he’s obsessed and irrational. (His comic-book imprimateur is “the mad Titan,” but I don’t think that’s used in the MCU.)
I’m still bothered that the dialogue didn’t differentiate between “half of all life” and “half of all sentient life” (which is a more general problem in SF: the organisms with speaking parts are the only ones who matter — to sensor scans, etc.) but as depicted, that seems to be how the Snap operated. Things that didn’t go poof-in-half: trees, lawns, wheat fields, domestic animals, Wakandan battle-rhinos, passing flocks of sparrows, etc.
@8: Did digestive issues actually get discussed in the movie? Would Half of All Probiotics External to Living Beings also have gotten Snapped if that were the case (thus leading to the Great Yogurt Wars)? Basically, I’m confused as to why taking out half of humanity wouldn’t also count for taking out half of all human gut bacteria, etc.
@9: That’s really a good point, unless Thanos was all “Well I’ll take out half the humans on this planet, but leave all their other living organisms alone, but I am totally wiping out this entire planet with an equivalent amount of non-human living organism to make up for it.” Somehow, I doubt he was that precise. ;)
Maybe Thanos wanted to act like he was kicking off a jam session.
Maybe Thanos wanted to snap his fingers while wearing a gigantic metal glove.
I just felt compelled to point out the irony inherent in this paragraph.
While I don’t tend to wear metal gauntlets, I have snapped my fingers wearing gloves.
I came into this expecting a discussion of Malthusian economics and the ethics of disposing of the “surplus population.”
Boy, was I surprised!
#2 – um, no. Think about it for a moment. How could you initiate life in such a case? Plenty of things – perhaps even most – eat non-living material.
Since Thanos seems to be alive, wouldn’t killing have the life in the universe have a 50% chance of leaving him dead? This could be another flaw in his plan..