So, just in case you don't know, Avengers: Infinity War is one of my three favorite movies of all time (along with The Dark Knight and The Empire Strikes Back). It came out in April of 2018 and I have seen it probably fifteen times since it came out. If you wanted, I could likely recite most of the movie for you.
However, I am not here to rave about Infinity War. If you want to read that, I have a review on it. It's the longest review that I've written to date, so go check it out.
But if you are here for fact or fiction, you are probably wondering why I am investigating whether a movie about an evil purple alien that wants to wipe out half of all life with the snap of his fingers.
The answer to that lies below. Let's see if Infinity War is fact...or fiction.
Introduction
I didn't actually do this when I tore Up apart, but I do have a little bit of explaining to do. Obviously, the majority of Infinity War is complete fantasy and sci-fi. I'm not going to be talking about each superhero in this film, because that'd be way too much. I'm not going to talk about Thanos. I'm not going to talk about the Infinity Gauntlet and how the snap could work. I am going to have a section for each and every Infinity Stone, in order of how Thanos collects them.
I attached pictures of all the stones to their paragraphs, and I explain a scene in each of the subsequent paragraphs. If you want to watch that scene, then click on the picture.
This will be a lot more scientific then Up, so get ready.
The Power Stone
The Power Stone is first seen in Guardians of the Galaxy. Guardians is going to be pivotal to our conclusion today, so let's dive in.
In the opening scene of Guardians, we see Peter Quill, aka Star-Lord, dancing around like an idiot until he reaches this mystic temple place. Inside of the temple is this silver ball, which is later referred to as "The Orb". If you haven't guessed already, the Orb contains the Power Stone.
The Power Stone is probably the most powerful of the Infinity Stones. It can basically destroy everything in its path, so, you know. That's pretty owerful. The Power Stone seems to be the most dangerous of the Infinity Stones, so it would take a lot to have this thing be real.
Later in Guardians, the Guardians of the Galaxy visit this dude called the Collector. The Collector is really weird and disturbing, but he explains the Infinity Stones to the Guardians. Before the universe was created, there were six powerful things called singularities. That is bolded and italicized because it is very important. Then the Big Bang occurred and forged the singularities into concentrated rocks; Infinity Stones. If you want to watch that clip, click the picture of the Power Stone.
A singularity is a location where all physical laws of time and space are muddled together. Everything that we know about the universe and about gravity and space and time all vanish inside of a singularity. Space and time just cease to exist in this endless void.
Creepy, right?
Well, now that that has been established, let's check out if a singularity could be used as the Power Stone is inside of the MCU.
Singularities usually end up forming another well-known space region: a black hole.
In case you are not aware, a black hole is an endless region in space where the gravitational pull is so strong that nothing can escape.
So, technically, if a singularity were to be controlled and condensed inside of an Infinity Stone, there would be potential mass destruction. A black hole would suck everyone and everything around it up, and then it would proceed to rip anything inside of it apart and kill all living things inside of it.
This doesn't exactly match up with what we see the Power Stone do, as most people just disintegrate when they touch it, but, in a way, the Power Stone is not completely impossible.
The Space Stone
The Space Stone is first seen inside of Captain America: The First Avenger. Like the Power Stone, it is encased in that box above. This one is a blue, shiny cube called "The Tesseract".
The Space Stone is the stone that Thanos uses the most. He uses it to rip holes in space and basically teleport through these portals. He is also seen to be able to move other things with it in the final battle of Infinity War. You can see that if you click the picture.
We don't actually see the stone really put to use until Infinity War, but it does pop up a lot throughout the universe. Let's look into the possibility of the Space Stone.
We already established one of the singularity's powers. It creates black holes, which can destroy pretty much everything, depending on the size.
This one is pretty unbelievable, though.
Let's say you create a black hole. Then you create another black hole, entangled with the first one through this thing called quantum entanglement.
I didn't know what quantum meant before this, so I'm going to define it real quick. Quantum is a Latin word that refers to a "portion" or an "amount".
So these two black holes are connected. Next, you can put quantum information inside of the first black hole. Quantum information is a piece of information that is stored inside of a qubit, which is just this storage device that is made for storing quantum information. It's a bit confusing for those of us who aren't Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein, but bear with me here.
After entering the quantum information into the black hole, it will be scrambled throughout the black hole. After that, though, if you wait a little bit, the quantum information will be reassembled and spit out of the other black hole. No matter where the two holes are, if they are entangled, then the quantum information will make its way to the other black hole.
There are a few problems, though. A living thing cannot travel through these entangled black holes and still live to tell the tale. Like I said previously, the black hole will rip anyone apart and kill them.
Also, this is only said to have been proven to work with quantum information. No other studies have been conducted to see if anything else can make it through.
So the Space Stone can teleport certain things, but no humans. Still pretty cool, though.
The Reality Stone
The Reality Stone is introduced in Thor: The Dark World. Dark World gives us our first look at the stone through a mystic goo called "the Aether". That is pronounced like "eee-ther".
The stone disappears until Infinity War, which, to my disappointment, it did not receive much use in. However, it is incredibly powerful.
The Reality Stone can basically alter reality toward however the user wants reality to look. Thanos uses it to lure his daughter into a trap. After Gamora thinks that she has killed Thanos, he reveals himself as alive through reality and says another really philosophical quote that I love. That's the picture clip.
Anyways, let's see if singularities can change reality however people want it to.
This section is going to examine fully what would happen if you fell into a black hole.
This quote is directly from NASA. If you fell into a black hole, you would experience a "different reality". Your perception of the space-time continuum would be completely disoriented.
You'd have no sense of anything. Reality, as we know it, would be completely out of the picture.
And you'd be stretched as far as your body can possibly go until you are ripped to pieces, but that is a minor detail that we can choose to skip.
If that was condensed and controlled by someone, they could choose for people to experience a different reality. I mean, this is still hypothetical, because people can't actually control black holes and singularities, but if somebody could do that, the Reality Stone would be possible. In a way, at least.
One thing that is holding that back, though, is that the person who is controlling the Reality Stone would not be able to control reality itself, just control people going into black holes and experiencing a different reality.
Half possible, half not.
The Soul Stone
Perhaps the most ludicrous of the six stones, the Soul Stone is not seen in the MCU until Infinity War. Nobody is said to know the location of the stone until Thanos blackmails Gamora into taking him to Vormir, where the stone is held captive by the Red Skull, who was the villain of Captain America: The First Avenger.
On Vormir, Red Skull tells Thanos that, to get the Soul Stone, he must sacrifice somebody that he loves. Luckily, Gamora, the only person that he loves, is with him. In a truly emotional scene, he grabs his daughter and tosses her off a cliff like a rag doll. Then he retrieves the Soul Stone. Watch through clicking the pic.
And we never see the stone's power demonstrated. Ever. But I have a weapon that Thanos does not. The Internet.
The Soul Stone is able to manipulate life and death. You can control when somebody lives and when somebody dies. This is the power that ultimately allows Thanos to destroy half of all life in the conclusion of the film.
As incredible and shocking as the powers of black holes and singularities have been, they do not possess the power to control life and death. That would be the craziest thing that I have ever heard, but it is not possible. So this is a pretty short section.
I guess the one thing that is redeeming about this is that if somebody gained control of the Infinity Stones, they could pretty much decide when they wanted someone to die by sucking them into a black hole.
The Time Stone
The Time Stone is first seen in Doctor Strange. Its power is definitely the most defined; the user has complete control of time. It can be reversed or sped up whenever the user wants, and it can also create an endless time loop, which is demonstrated in the climax of Doctor Strange.
The stone is encased in the Eye of Agamotto, this mystic eye necklace that Doctor Strange wears. Strange uses it often, which gives me a good idea of what to look for when researching this stone.
Thanos uses it to extract the final Infinity Stone at the end of the film, but that is really the only time that we see it put to use during Infinity War.
There are isn't one definitive scene that explains the Time Stone, so I attached the finale of Doctor Strange to the picture.
Let's review the singularity's powers: it can create black holes, which can destroy, like, everything. It can move quantum information from place to place. It can create a different reality if you fall into a black hole.
But here, we examine the importance of the muddled space-time continuum inside of a black hole. Time is so much different inside of a black hole, and appears to go a lot slower when inside the hole.
So it isn't exactly able to be manipulated, but it works completely differently. It isn't exactly on par with the Time Stone, but none of these have been exactly how they are in the movies.
Time cannot be reversed in a singularity, but it can be slowed down. Which is cool enough and close enough to the actual stone for me to give it to the movie.
The Mind Stone
We have made it. The sixth and final Infinity Stone. The one that is the most prominent inside of Marvel's Infinity Saga.
The Mind Stone is first seen in The Avengers. Loki, who was the main villain of that film, was carrying it in his scepter and using it to mind control people and get them on his side. In Avengers: Age of Ultron, the Mind Stone is used to create Ultron, the titular evil robot that tries to destroy the world. It is also used in that film to make Vision, who is the guy in the picture. The Mind Stone is placed inside of his head and stays there until Thanos rips it out at the end of Infinity War. That's the attached clip.
With this stone, Thanos completes the Infinity Gauntlet, snaps his fingers, and kills all of our favorite heroes. And they stay dead. For a couple movies, at least.
So let's see if the final singularity can really work.
And the simple answer is: No. Singularities cannot do mind control.
I do wish that the answer for the final Infinity Stone was more exciting, but it isn't.
This is the least possible of the Infinity Stones. Unlike the Soul Stone, no part of it is possible. It cannot mind control and it cannot create artificial intelligence.
This will probably end up being the shortest section, which is sad, but we got to get to this conclusion and verdict.
Final Verdict
I'm going to grade this a little differently than Up. Personally, I was shocked at how possible the Infinity Stones actually are.
Infinity War may be a superhero blockbuster about a giant purple alien that wants to destroy half the universe by snapping his fingers with a glove full of rocks, but the Infinity Stones are surprisingly possible (at least, some of them are). Not entirely fact, but not entirely fiction.
Verdict: Faction
If you read this entire post, I apologize for it being so long, and thank you so much for reading it. If you haven't seen Infinity War, I highly recommend that you go check it out, even though I just spoiled pretty much the entire movie. The next Fact or Fiction that I have lined up is Jurassic Park, which I will try to get out by next week. I am also planning on reviewing Cool Runnings in the next couple of days. Thank you guys for reading!