Iron Man armor technology
When you talk about, or even think about Iron Man, the first image that pops into your head (if you’re in the know of the superhero world, that is) is the legendary red and gold suit of armor. It’s undeniably the defining aspect of the character; after all, he’s named “Iron” Man.
Image Credit: Marvel Studios
It’s Not Actually Iron!
You may have always believed that the Iron Man suit is made of iron, as the name ‘Iron Man’ may imply, but that’s not even close to being true. The Iron Man suit that Tony Stark wears in the movies couldn’t possibly be made of iron. There are a few reasons behind that, namely the fact that iron is an extremely heavy and dense metal. It also rusts very easily, and is not as strong as some of its own alloys, such as steel.
It’s true that the inception of the Iron Man suit in a dingy cave (in the first Iron Man movie) was in the form of a crude-looking suit that may have contained pieces of iron. However, as stylish and ‘efficiency-centered’ as Tony is, he quickly discarded the idea of using iron to make his suit and instead used something else.Actually the suit was made from TITANIUM.
Real Iron Man suit with flying power
What makes Iron Man infallible in the face of impending disaster is not only his clever wit, but also his ability to zoom out of danger and quickly cross massive distances through the air (like flying to a foreign country to salvage people from a terrorist outfit after watching the horrific scenes of destruction on TV!).
This aspect is pretty much in the purview of exoskeletons; an exoskeleton that can fly is essentially Iron Man’s suit. Given how cool it is, it comes as no surprise that there have been several attempts to make this type of exoskeleton. One such device, called Rocketbelt, could lift the wearer up to 900 meters in the air. Efforts are ongoing to make the flight last longer and make the whole tech more safe for humans to pilot.
Iron Man’s helmet
The helmet is the only scientifically plausible part of his entire suit. It is something we can have in the near future as well. The cybernetic helmet used by Iron Man lets him control devices that are a part of his suit.
Bin He, Department Head (Biomedical Engineering) at the University of Minnesota has, in fact, created a helmet which in a way works similar to that of the Iron Man helmet. The basic principle behind the working of the helmet is related to the neurons’ electrical currents. These currents create electric and magnetic fields that can be detected by an EEG (Electroencephalograph).
Even though EEG has been available for almost 100 years, recent improvements in signal processing have allowed us to identify these neurons’ firing signatures. These neurons are associated with specific motor-imagery tasks. Professor He identified the firing patterns that take place when a man looking at images on a computer monitor tries to mentally move the cursor from left to right. Such frequencies once amplified and modified, can instruct the computer to move the cursor!
So even if he won’t make this helmet for the purpose of fighting, it could definitely be used to help paralyzed patients to better communicate with the people around them!
ARC REACTOR
Now, let’s get to the center of the matter… literally, the ‘center’ of Iron Man.
The small circle of light that sits in the center of Iron Man’s chest is not there just to look cool (although it does); it actually serves a much greater purpose.
We’re talking about the famous ‘ARC reactor’…
The thing that powers the entire Iron Man suit (Image Credit: www.instructables.com)
The Iron Man suit is clearly a remarkable invention with its hardened exoskeleton and seemingly impenetrable armor, but all of that would be useless if there wasn’t a power source that actually made it all work! That’s where the ‘light circle’ comes into play.
The ‘thing’ that Tony has jammed in his chest is basically an ARC reactor miniaturized into a small electromagnet with an energy output of 8 gigajoules per second. Given the fact that such a humongous source of energy is resting comfortably in his chest, we have to assume that there must be a remarkable network of cooling tubes ensuring that our beloved Tony isn’t roasted alive. Also, it must be extremely small and immaculately concealed, as we never see any tubes or pipes sticking out of the armor.
Simply put, the thing in the center of Iron Man’s suit provides power that is roughly equivalent to the combined power output of three nuclear power plants, yet it is no bigger than a hockey puck. All these things combined place the whole idea of a miniaturized ARC reactor in the realm of pure fantasy.
It comes as no surprise that we call Iron Man a ‘cool’ superhero!
Efforts are in full swing to make real Iron Man suits (or something like them) for military purposes; in fact, the prototypes we talked about above are pretty close to what we’ve been dreaming of for real-life superheroes. It’s only a matter of time before we see Iron Men patrolling the skies in our world, and who knows, maybe we’ll even get a suit like that for ourselves!
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