Are Pandora’s Floating Mountains Possible?

The Astrophysics of Avatar

When you love scientific analysis as much as I do, even the most fantastical elements of sci-fi fantasy stories peak your curiosity. I was recently enticed while rewatching Avatar, whose world Pandora is home to breathtaking floating mountains. They’re an incredible sight to behold in the film, but could we ever see them in real life? What do physics and other planetary sciences tell us about this concept?

To answer these questions, we’ll be looking at the force credited with suspending the mountains of Pandora in the film: magnetism. By pushing this force as far as we know it can be pushed, we can see whether a planet or moon with floating mountains could exist and define its traits.

What you see above is a map of the Earth’s magnetic field taken from Smithsonian Magazine. This field is created by the churning of molten metal in the Earth’s core, and it’s the reason Earth’s surface hasn’t been sterilized by deadly radiation. The geomagnetic field is quite literally Earth’s force field. However, as far as magnets go, it’s relatively weak.