Despite being a long-time Fantastic Four fan, I have to admit to being a bit befuddled by their origin story. It was simple at first: Reed didn’t properly shield his ship against cosmic rays and the resulting exposure to radiation changed them forever. I got that part. But then it got complicated. 
Later retellings of their origin focused on the fact that their own personalities interacted with the cosmic rays to personalize their powers: Reed’s maleable intellect created his stretching powers, Ben’s rocky personality made him the Thing, Johnny’s firey temper manifested in his flame powers and Sue was a woman who worked behind the scenes on the team so she became invisible. (Hey, it was the 1960’s - cut Stan some slack!)
Then it got really weird - Straczynski said the cosmic ray burst responsible for their powers was really the result of some alien communication…blah, blah blah.
Cosmic calamity
But my central question has always been: how did Reed Richards, the world’s pre-eminent scientist, F-up something as basic as cosmic rays? Could it have been because there was a source of cosmic rays that at the time was unknown to scientists? BINGO!
This story from Science News, reveals that astronomers have recently discovered massive cosmic ray bursts coming from some nearby “exotic celestial object.” This unknown object could be a ”pulsar, mini-quasar, supernova remnant or an intermediate mass black hole.” Maybe a similar celestial object was in action the day the FF took their infamous trip into space. Then I wouldn’t feel so bad that Reed missed the boat on this one. And now maybe Ben can stop his whining.
Comic Book Scientist Alert
Are there any other super heroes that derive their power from cosmic rays? Leave a comment so we can update our Comic Book Guide to Science data base.
