The Science behind Erasure
-it's actually ingenious!!
SO recently I wondered....if Aizawa does hero work after hours...does that mean he also has increased night vision?? Because it wouldn't makes sense for a hero who relies on his eyes to work at a time when he can't see....right?
(this led me on a scientific deep dive because I am a huge nerd.)
As we know, Aizawa's eyes light up (red) when he activates his quirk. It just so happens, red doesn't glare like other colors of light do. This means red light makes night vision easier. Why? Because your pupils don't need to re-adjust between the light source & the dark around you! This reduces eye strain & keeps your field of vision clear & consistent at night, while still illuminating your path!
Simultaneously, red light is difficult to see at a distance so it'll help keep your position safe from possible attackers. This is why military flash lights are usually red!
So YES!... Aizawa's quirk can improve his night vision... By acting like a red flashlight! But that's not all!
Then I started thinking of HOW his quirk works...He stares at someone, his eyes glow red, his hair floats...and somehow the enemy's power stops working??
As we know, Erasure deactivates the enemy's quirk gene. This happens when Aizawa glares at them. But HOW can he deactivate a gene by only seeing the outside of the body? Especially since Erasure doesn't erase physical mutations??
Turns out, red light has a longer wave length than other colors, allowing it to penetrate the body more easily! In fact red & Infrared light (invisible to humans) is often used in medical imaging to detect things like veins and blood vessels beneath the skin.
Simply put Aizawa's quirk penetrates the body kind of like an x-ray. The reason we can see his eyes light up, and NOT the target being illuminated( like the picture on the left below)?? It's because he likely also emits red light that crosses over into infrared spectrum. So the red light that actually enters the body is invisible to the naked eye.
However real x-rays fall on the opposite side of the light spectrum under Ultra violet light. They not only enter but pass through their target, So to be clear Aizawa probably does not have x-ray vision. You may have also heard of Infrared in terms of night vision goggles. Aizawa likely does not have thermal/night vision either. His eyes only EMIT visible red light which allows him to see better in the dark & Infrared which enters the body.
So while Aizawa's glowing red eyes may at first seem like a meaningless, but cool, feature of his quirk, it's really the tell into how erasure works!
However, glowing red eyes only tell us how aizawa's quirk REACHES the gene, not how he switches it off! So how does he do it?? With an electromagnetic field! The light spectrum is a small part of the larger electromagnetic spectrum & the only part of it visible to the human eye!
So, how do y'all know I'm not just making this up?
What's the most familiar electromagnetic force humans encounter on a daily basis?--- STATIC ELECTRICITY! When aizawa switches on his quirk he essentially becomes a cat being rubbed with a balloon! The carbon nanofibers in his capture weapon conduct static electricity so that floats too!
Aizawa's Erasure works by emitting an electromagnetic field, which like the infrared light, penetrates the body of his target! Now that we know how his quirk reaches the inside of the body, the question is how does it disrupt the quirk function?
As it turns out, electricity can be fired at DNA to switch Genes on and off in real life! So Erasure specifically targets the quirk gene and immobilizes it temporarily with electricity!!!! That's crazy!!!
Since we know Aizawa can't erase the quirks of heteromorphic types it's safe to assume it's because physical mutations effect more than one gene & Erasure specifically targets a single quirk gene.
If Erasure got into the hands of AFO it could easily mean the end of the world, or any one who apposes AFO for that matter. Sure AFO could use Erasure as Aizawa does, but he could also scientifically manipulate it to target genes OTHER than the quirk gene. Meaning he could kill you, or even make your body fall apart, with just a look.
Congrats you made to the end! You now have a PHD is Shota Aizawa.
