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marvel - Does adamantium conduct electricity?


Are there any canon references to adamantium conducting electricity?


(I started thinking about this after reading How vulnerable is Wolverine to electricity?)



Answer



According to Einstein's theory of special relativity, Yes.


Yes, I just invoked Einstein and relativity in response to a question about a comic book character. Here's why:


From multiple interactions between the Wolverine and our good friend Magneto, we know that the adamantium laced throughout Wolverine's skeleton is ferromagnetic. (How do we know it's not paramagnetism or diamagnetism instead? Because both of those forces are too weak to be felt, let alone to allow Magneto to manipulate someone as strong as Wolverine; that leaves only the one option (well, also ferrimagnetism, but the two are so closely related we can pretend it's a subset of the former).1)


According to Einstein's special relativity, magnetism cannot exist without electricity, and electricity cannot exist without magnetism. This is a function of length contraction and time dilation, and the fact that magnetism is a function of velocity.2 Thus, any material that generates or is affected by magnetic forces must have free electrons flowing through in order for that effect to exist.


If that last sentence sounds like a description of electricity, there's a good reason for that: It is! You can think of Magneto as generating an electric field and then manipulating that in order to generate a related electric field in Wolverine's metal-laced bones and manipulate them.


At the end of the day, though, it quite simply boils down to this: Magnetism is a function of electricity (and vice versa), and therefore any material that has or is affected by magnetism must therefore be able to conduct electricity (albeit with various levels of resistance).




Of course, the whole question is moot. If you want to electrocute someone, you don't have to first ensure they have a metal skeleton in order to do it! The human body, while no superconductor, is plenty capable of conducting more than enough electricity to be fatal. Case in point: Hundreds of people are killed by electrocution every year in the US. It may not kill the almighty Wolverine, but his metal skeleton might actually reduce his risk, because it offers the electricity a low-resistance path to ground that does not involve either his heart nor his brain.



1However, the distinction between ferro/ferrimagnetic forces and para/diamagnetic forces aren't actually relevant.


2A. Einstein: "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", June 30, 1905.


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