If you found Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania confusing, rest assured you’re not the only one. The latest installment in the MCU has been deemed a disappointment of quantum proportions by many Marvel fans, ranking only one point above the (almost) equally disappointing Eternals. The newest set of films in the MCU has been the least-liked of any in the studio’s entire roster and long-time fans are hoping the MCU rights its course in the near future before they jump ship entirely.
Ant-Man has always been an outlier among the other Avengers; Scott Lang is more or less a regular guy whose only superpower is the power of science. With the aid of an incredible super suit, Lang has the ability to both shrink or grow in size by harnessing the fictional “Pym Particles.” The Pym Particles are subatomic, multi-dimensional particles that have the ability to decrease or increase the size of both inorganic and organic objects, and their discovery led Professor Hank Pym to become the first Ant-Man. After the events of the first film, Pym and crew discovered the Pym Particles could also transport people and objects to the Quantum Realm.
In the MCU, the Quantum Realm is a part of the multiverse that can only be seen when shrunk down to an incredibly small level. Hank Pym describes the Quantum Realm as “a reality where all concepts of time and space become irrelevant as you shrink for all eternity” in the first Ant-Man film. In the franchise, the Quantum Realm has been used as a time travel method and despite its seemingly small size, it can house entire civilizations.
It seems obvious no such realm could exist outside of fiction, but is that really true? Let’s find out.
Is the Quantum Realm fictional or does it actually exist in real life?
It might come as a surprise, but the quantum realm is real — it’s just nothing like the movies. In an interview with ComicBook.com, quantum physicist Dr. Sumanta Tewari defined the quantum realm as “a place where the laws of quantum mechanics are valid,” meaning we’re already existing in the quantum realm right now. Within a real-life quantum realm, however, the laws of time and space still apply (no matter what Hank Pym says).
According to quantum theory, particles have a probability of being in multiple places at once, which leads us to the multiverse theory. Unlike the Ant-Man films, Dr. Tewari says it’s impossible for us to communicate between multiverses unless we could “break some fundamental laws of physics.”
Unfortunately, you can’t use a quantum realm to time travel in our current reality but it is theoretically possible. According to Dr. Tewari, if you can travel faster than the speed of light, you will age much more slowly than someone traveling at a normal speed. It’s not time travel as we usually think of it, but in that scenario, a person could spend 20 years moving faster than lightspeed and age as if only five years passed.
Forbes contributor Chad Orzel believes pop culture continues to misrepresent the quantum realm as a magical place because of the seemingly random nature of quantum physics. According to Orzel, “quantum physics is all about probability. When we do calculations in quantum mechanics, the end result is always a probability distribution.” Scientists cannot determine the exact result when calculating quantum equations and instead rely on probability to predict the outcomes of experiments. While quantum physics allows for improbable events, rules still apply to the quantum realm.
With the help of these experts, we can confirm the existence of quantum realms but don’t expect to use one to enter the multiverse anytime soon.
