12 Superheroes Ranked By Science (From Lame To Awesome)

11. Ice Man

Next, the scientists turned their attention to Marvel's Iceman.

To kick off, they look at the mechanisms that could be behind Iceman's ability to pull ice out of thin air. They suggest the he is able to produce a kind of organic refrigerant that can be compressed in the body and directed through vein like channels. This then draws heat energy from the atmosphere as it expands and causes water vapour in the atmosphere to freeze.

This, it is fair to say, is a pretty cool (fnarr) super power but, as is so often the case in science, it all comes down to the issue of energy.

Energy cannot be created or destroyed (conservation of energy, fam), and so Iceman would need to get his refrigeration energy from somewhere in order to organically generate it. Traditionally, humans get their's from food, and this is what the paper goes with. They calculate that Iceman would have to chow down on 10,000 kilocalories to produce just 1kg of ice - that's four times the amount needed for the average man.

What's more this would leave him no surplus for powering his basic bodily functions, and so he would have to scarf down an additional 1,000-2,000 kcal just to remain upright and breathing. All of this eating would leave very little time for any superheroing.

Read more:

Vol 14, No 1 (2015), PST, The Spectacularly Exploding Iceman

Vol 8, No 1 (2009), PST, Iceman