The Semi-Science of Thanos’s Snap : Role of Each Infinity Stone

There are six infinity stones related to six elements of nature and life — space, time, power, reality, mind and soul. All of these stones have their own unique capabilities. But working together, after being attached to the infinity gauntlet, they can destroy life at a universal scale.

How does this really happen? First of all, we know from Einstein’s relativity that nothing can move faster than light. The MCU seems to respect this basic fact, as the movies show all intergalactic travels only through wormholes; such as Bifrost bridges and portals. (I shall write about this in a different post.) So, if Thanos’s snap sends out a regular electromagnetic signal, the signal will take many billion years to traverse the whole universe. So, an ‘instantaneous’ destruction of life in the whole universe cannot happen.

You may find more problems like this, if you think about the snapping process carefully. Problems like this imply that the process cannot be done by a regular electromagnetic signal travelling through space. Thanos’s snap is an extremely complicated process; and each infinity stone has its own role to play in it. So, here I am writing my theory on how each stone may contribute to the universal-scale destruction of life with Thanos’s snap. I am assuming that, with the snap or reverse-snap (by Professor Hulk using the Stark gauntlet), a complex signal is sent out that carries individual signals from all the infinity stones. The infinity stones perform their assigned tasks using these special signals.

Space Stone

Let us start with the problem which I have mentioned earlier. We know that the space stone is capable of creating portals between different places in space. A portal is basically a wormhole, which can be used to transport anything between the two connected places ‘instantaneously’; even if the two places are lightyears away from each other. So, it is the space stone’s job to transport the snapping or reverse-snapping signal everywhere in the universe ‘instantaneously’. It can do so by creating a huge network of portals spanning across the whole universe.

Time Stone

Notice that I have put the word ‘instantaneously’ in quotes. This is because, there cannot be absolute instantaneous events happening across the whole universe. Solar systems and galaxies move with respect to one another at velocities comparable to lightspeed. So, according to Einstein’s relativity, time itself runs very much differently at different places in the universe. The job of the time stone is to address this problem. This stone is known to play around with time. So, even if absolute instantaneous events are fundamentally impossible, the time stone can minimize the differences between times when the snapping or reverse-snapping signal reaches different places in the universe.

Mind Stone

The primary job of the mind stone is probably to take command from the wielder of the gauntlet. The mind stone reads the wielder’s wish and transforms it into the snapping or reverse-snapping signal. The stone probably also lets the wielder see what is happening in all the targeted places in the universe while the destruction by snapping or resurrection by reverse-snapping is being carried out.

Another important job of the mind stone can be restoring the minds in all the resurrected bodies after the reverse-snap.

Other than these, the mind stone may have another role to play. Even if Thanos has been saying about destroying half of all life, he probably only meant half of all sentient creatures, as we have not seen any trees or plants disappearing. This fact gives a clue about how ‘half of all life’ is randomly selected. The mind stone probably identifies all active minds in the whole universe. Then, it randomly selects half of them, which are targeted for destruction.

Power Stone

The actual destruction is done by the power stone. It is known to have the capability to destroy worlds. Staying true to its nature, it can also destroy the bodies of the selected sentient creatures. So, turning the selected bodies into dust is done by the power stone.

By the reverse-snap, all the bodies are to be resurrected. But the piles of dust, which were scattered years ago while destroying the bodies, cannot be recombined any more to recreate the bodies. So, a different process is required. The way to make it possible can be found in Einstein’s relativity. From this theory, we know that energy and mass are the same substance. So, in the reverse-snap, the power stone possibly provides enough energy to recreate the bodies of all the dead creatures.

Soul Stone

According to belief, a soul can never be destroyed. When a body dies, the soul is believed to be set free of the body. The MCU seems to respect this belief, as we have seen in the movie Doctor Strange.

When a creature dies because of Thanos’s snap, there is always a possibility that someone will reverse-snap to resurrect the creature. This means, the soul needs to be restored into the recreated body. To make this possible, the soul stone probably sends all the souls into a soul world — somewhere in the universe or in some other dimension. The stone can access this soul world as necessary. So, it releases the souls from there after the reverse-snap, and restores them into the recreated bodies. This is the job of the soul stone.

Reality Stone

According to quantum theory, information can never be destroyed. If creatures are erased from existence, there is a lot of quantum information that appears to be destroyed. But it actually doesn’t. The reality stone helps here to preserve the laws of physics. All quantum information about the destroyed bodies, the disappeared minds and their connections to the souls (which are in the soul world) are possibly saved by the reality stone into the fabric of reality itself. This not only helps in preserving the laws of physics, but also helps in the resurrection process after the reverse-snap. The reality stone can use this information to manipulate power stone’s energy to recreate the bodies perfectly. Then, this information can be used by the mind stone and the soul stone to restore the minds and souls into the recreated bodies. In this way, exact replicas of the erased creatures can be created.

This concludes my idea about the role of each infinity stone. In this article, I have tried to relate some actual basic physics with the movie concepts. Let me know what you think about this approach. Do you have other similar ideas of your own? Please share in the comments below.