US scientists: Thanos can't snap his fingers with the Infinity Gauntlet

Superhero movies ask us to suspend our disbelief, but one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's most iconic moments proved impossible for reasons you might not think.

At the end of Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos' snap of his fingers caused half of the universe's population to disappear. While the supernatural part of this is obviously unrealistic, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States have found that it is actually impossible for Thanos to snap his fingers while wearing the Infinity Gauntlet.

The study states that a single finger snap is the "fastest acceleration of the human body ever measured," and the physics involved would be impossible for Thanos to do while wearing a glove.

Basically, the study says that the acceleration of your fingers when snapping is incredibly high - three times the acceleration of a professional baseball player's arm when pitching a ball. A finger snap takes only 7 milliseconds, which is more than 20 times faster than the blink of an eye. In order to achieve such fast movements, the most important factor is friction. The researchers found that trying to snap your fingers while wearing a metal glove did not generate enough friction.

"Our results suggest that Thanos could not have originally snapped his fingers because his fingers were covered in metal gloves. So, this could be a Hollywood special effect rather than actual physics at work."

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