The producer of “Avatar” is fond of saying that writer and director James Cameron does not write science fiction, he writes science fact.
From the reclining, cup-holdered seat of a local multiplex, that seems a generous statement. Neither mountains floating in midair or fauna that lights up like the Las Vegas Strip at night would seem to have the slightest foundation in reality.
And yet they do.
To be sure, Mr. Cameron likes to bring his fair share of Hollywood to the cosmos, painting his scenes with the brush of fantasy. But beneath some of his most outlandish visions is often a kernel of scientific possibility.
The floating Hallelujah Mountains
The topic of how an entire mountain range can bob over the landscape like corks is never explicitly addressed in the film, yet the explanation is woven throughout the story.
It all has to do with superconductors.
When superconductors are in the presence of a magnetic field, they can float. “Avatar’s” alien world of Pandora, it turns out, is simply a massive superconductor.
At the very beginning of the story, we are told that humans have come to Pandora to mine unobtanium. Unobtanium is the ultimate superconductor. (The very name, “unobtanium,” is a nod to sci-fi afficionados, who coined the word to describe a material with mythical properties.)
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