The physics of Superman's feats. Does modern have to mean realisitc?

[Korath]

I would say that it depends. For instance, I have no problem with Superman having tthe strength to fly a whle building as f it was as light as a feather... but I hated the scene in JL where he did so because it made no sense for the very structure of the building to not break down the way it was carried. In effect, it depends of the use of the powers for every character, included Superman. If I can accept that some gal can create a zone of silence by simply saying "sshh", I can accept Superman powers, but they have to be used in a way that makes sense.

Overall : stopping a massive asteroid with is bare hands, yes. Carrying fragile structures in impossible ways, no. But that's just my opinion.

[TruthAndJustice]

As stated earlier John Byrne provided as much of an explanation of how Superman's powers work as is necessary.

I prefer Superman as powerful as he was circa 1987. If you've got a guy who can push planets around or can fly faster than light or can travel forward and backward through time through sheer willpower than he makes all other superheroes redundant, especially the Flash.

[Carabas]

That's what im saying,if you tone down everybody,you can tone down Superman,but still make him win.

I think that with current technology you don't have to tone him down.
You just have to take care you don't accidentally (or on purpose, Snyder) make a disaster movie that turns Superman into a horriphic figure.

[KC]

Does any other character get as much scrutiny. I've heard people claim Flash is several orders of magnitude faster than the speed of light, which is utterly ridiculous. For example, how does he see where he is going?
And they just explain that away with the "speed force", what-ever that is.

The Speed Force is an extra-dimensional energy and it is used to explain why the Flash can do what he does. The Flash going faster than light is ridiculous, but it is normal for what characters can do in the DC universe.

[KC]

I prefer Superman as powerful as he was circa 1987. If you've got a guy who can push planets around or can fly faster than light or can travel forward and backward through time through sheer willpower than he makes all other superheroes redundant, especially the Flash.

If Superman was as powerful as he was circa 1987, he would still make a lot of Superheroes redundant, this is where the suspension of disbelief comes in. Not really, Barry and Wally are both faster than Superman.

[SiegePerilous02]

I would say that it depends. For instance, I have no problem with Superman having tthe strength to fly a whle building as f it was as light as a feather... but I hated the scene in JL where he did so because it made no sense for the very structure of the building to not break down the way it was carried. In effect, it depends of the use of the powers for every character, included Superman. If I can accept that some gal can create a zone of silence by simply saying "sshh", I can accept Superman powers, but they have to be used in a way that makes sense.

Overall : stopping a massive asteroid with is bare hands, yes. Carrying fragile structures in impossible ways, no. But that's just my opinion.

That kind of thing is cartoonish and silly, but it could be argued that Superman is an inherently ridiculous/over the top character to begin with and it should be embraced. That building not falling apart is hardly the most unrealistic thing happening. I mean, the fact that an invincible flying man is lifting it is probably more notable. Not to mention this is a universe where Greek gods are totally real.

As stated earlier John Byrne provided as much of an explanation of how Superman's powers work as is necessary.

I think the explanations are just distractions and just draw more attention to how ridiculous this all is.

I think Morrison has a great quote along the lines of kids being able to embrace all this more readily because they accept it as being make believe and don't overthink it like adults.

I prefer Superman as powerful as he was circa 1987. If you've got a guy who can push planets around or can fly faster than light or can travel forward and backward through time through sheer willpower than he makes all other superheroes redundant, especially the Flash.

Not really. Superman was doing all those things back in the Silver Age and wasn't popping into the other books and solving the problems of the other superheroes. They were still the heroes of those stories. Because all corners of the DC universe are totally bonkers and while Superman is doing something that requires his super feats, a million other things great and small are occurring as well that need attention.

[Jim Kelly]

. . . but I hated the scene in JL where he did so because it made no sense for the very structure of the building to not break down the way it was carried

This is why I say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I don't instinctively know that the building should break down. I never questioned this as a kid. And I only know it now because people tell me so, but it's not something I know in my gut.

To me it looks like the sun goes around the Earth. There are lots of things that we assume to be true, based on our senses, that science tells us aren't really true. People know just enough science to believe certain things, but they don't know enough science to understand how the universe really works.

Comic books routinely tell us the universe has a centre--and I bet a lot of people believe that--when in fact there is no centre to the universe, or rather wherever you are that's the centre, because everything is moving away from everything else.

How is Superman--or any super-hero--flying? He's breaking the laws of gravity, apparently. If he can do that, then why can't he make a building also defy gravity?

[Kuwagaton]

That kind of thing is cartoonish and silly, but it could be argued that Superman is an inherently ridiculous/over the top character to begin with and it should be embraced. That building not falling apart is hardly the most unrealistic thing happening. I mean, the fact that an invincible flying man is lifting it is probably more notable. Not to mention this is a universe where Greek gods are totally real.



I think the explanations are just distractions and just draw more attention to how ridiculous this all is.

I think Morrison has a great quote along the lines of kids being able to embrace all this more readily because they accept it as being make believe and don't overthink it like adults.



Not really. Superman was doing all those things back in the Silver Age and wasn't popping into the other books and solving the problems of the other superheroes. They were still the heroes of those stories. Because all corners of the DC universe are totally bonkers and while Superman is doing something that requires his super feats, a million other things great and small are occurring as well that need attention.

I don't mean to criticize these since I haven't read them, but along those lines I remembered this article from recently about how Superman showed up in the early Justice League to be conveniently taken out.

https://www.cbr.com/justice-league-s...-explain-away/

[Jim Kelly]

In the early days of the Justice League, Jack Schiff and Mort Weisnger (who were senior editors) insisted that Julius Schwartz could not use Batman and Superman to any great extent in the JLA. So they had to leave Batman and Superman out of most of the action (and they couldn't put them on the covers). But at a certain point, Julie complained about this to Jack Liebowitz (I think it was Liebowitz, as Harry Donenfeld had suffered a traumatic brain injury in 1962, from which he wouldn't recover). And Liebowitz told Schwartz that was BS and he should go ahead and use Batman and Superman. After which, Batman and Superman became much more active members in the Justice League.

[sunofdarkchild]

I liked it when Superman's limits were defined as 'strong enough to move a mountain.' That in and of itself is insanely powerful even if it's a smaller mountain, and it still provides a range for his power to fall into, as mountains come in different sizes.

[jimmy]

I don't want his powers curbed,I want his CONTROL tested.

Neither Do I!

Control is where balance and procession come in

All I know is that I lean toward the Silver Age power level end of the spectrum with Superman (as Siegel worked on his character into the 1960s) and feel Morrison and many others showed how Superman can be quite vulnerable nonetheless. I don't care for overexplaining his powers or weaknesses or etc. I don't need a science textbook on Superman's powers and how realistic or not they are as Superman is not real (as Grant Morrison would say (but Grant also thinks he's really real in a sense too!)).

...And I lean with thee, Silver Age!!

Looking back at those early years - I've always stated that most of the Golden Age (1938 - 1945/47 ish) was a "Work In Progress" with good amount of tweaking going on to the development of Superman in both his; appearance (costume) and defining his abilities.

Does any other character get as much scrutiny. I've heard people claim Flash is several orders of magnitude faster than the speed of light, which is utterly ridiculous. For example, how does he see where he is going?
And they just explain that away with the "speed force", what-ever that is.

NO! It is not even close, every other Hero is given a "Easy Pass" if not....lauded in some way especially, when they're compared with Superman! Ideally, Superman should be the entire "Justice League" (the ultimate one man gang) period!

Believe or, not if you want to see the Justice League working great as a team there is video from archives with Superman (at his finest) giving out the orders to the other team members: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38wb02PI89Y

I'd imagine that the "Speed-Force", would be what both; protects the Flash (being of flesh and blood) otherwise he could never survive going that anywhere near that fast and, maybe throws him out of time sync with his surrounding just enough which allows him to react to his environment (see where he is going).

[stephens2177]

Maybe Superman needs to get a "magic" source for his powers like flash and GL have.

Maybe superman can be imbued with 5th dimension energy,not enough to be god,but enough to effect everything in almost impossible ways

[marhawkman]

This is why I say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I don't instinctively know that the building should break down. I never questioned this as a kid. And I only know it now because people tell me so, but it's not something I know in my gut.

To me it looks like the sun goes around the Earth. There are lots of things that we assume to be true, based on our senses, that science tells us aren't really true. People know just enough science to believe certain things, but they don't know enough science to understand how the universe really works.

Comic books routinely tell us the universe has a centre--and I bet a lot of people believe that--when in fact there is no centre to the universe, or rather wherever you are that's the centre, because everything is moving away from everything else.

How is Superman--or any super-hero--flying? He's breaking the laws of gravity, apparently. If he can do that, then why can't he make a building also defy gravity?

Well, some buildings have the structural integrity of a stack of dominoes. Some have a frame of welded steel. one of them would require superhuman power simply to keep it from falling apart if it was moved an inch, the other could conceivably be dragged simply by tying a rope to it.

Also the concept that the universe has a definable center is rooted in real world science. IE, everything is moving away from the center, but at varying speeds.

[Jim Kelly]

Well, some buildings have the structural integrity of a stack of dominoes. Some have a frame of welded steel. one of them would require superhuman power simply to keep it from falling apart if it was moved an inch, the other could conceivably be dragged simply by tying a rope to it.

Also the concept that the universe has a definable center is rooted in real world science. IE, everything is moving away from the center, but at varying speeds.

wikipedia:

Hubble also demonstrated that the redshift of other galaxies is approximately proportional to their distance from the Earth (Hubble's law). This raised the appearance of our galaxy being in the centre of an expanding Universe, however, Hubble rejected the findings philosophically:

...if we see the nebulae all receding from our position in space, then every other observer, no matter where he may be located, will see the nebulae all receding from his position. However, the assumption is adopted. There must be no favoured location in the Universe, no centre, no boundary; all must see the Universe alike. And, in order to ensure this situation, the cosmologist, postulates spatial isotropy and spatial homogeneity, which is his way of stating that the Universe must be pretty much alike everywhere and in all directions."

The redshift observations of Hubble, in which galaxies appear to be moving away from us at a rate proportional to their distance from us, are now understood to be a result of the metric expansion of space. This is the increase of the distance between two distant parts of the Universe with time, and is an intrinsic expansion whereby the scale of space itself changes. As Hubble theorized, all observers anywhere in the Universe will observe a similar effect.

It's easier to think of this if you use a balloon. Blow it up a bit and put a dot anywhere on the surface of the balloon, and another dot somewhere else on the surface, now continue to blow up the balloon and you see the dots moving away from each other. If we say dot A is the centre then it appears that dot B is moving away from it. But if we use dot B as the centre then dot A is moving away from it.

This suggests that the universe is not 3 dimensional. It only appears so to us as dots on the surface of a balloon.

Real world observations are not dependable because the observer affects the phenomenon being observed. This is the observer effect.

wikipedia (again)

In physics, the observer effect is the fact that simply observing a situation or phenomenon necessarily changes that phenomenon. This is often the result of instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure in some manner . . .

. . . An especially unusual version of the observer effect occurs in quantum mechanics, as best demonstrated by the double-slit experiment. Physicists have found that even passive observation of quantum phenomena (by changing the test apparatus and passively 'ruling out' all but one possibility), can actually change the measured result.

The structural integrity of a building is not something I could know by random observation. I might intuitively know that a certain structure is strong--but then many buildings are structually unsound and nobody knows that until an earthquake brings them down. You would have to be an engineer to know this. So it's not something reading a comic book or watching a movie you would know--in the way that you know the sun rises in the east--you only know it because you've been educated to know it.

But things appear to happen, like the tides, that we can't readily explain. We don't dismiss these phenomenon as impossible, we just have to wait until a reasonable explanation can be worked out.

I would guess that if you built a structure in space or on the Moon or on Mars, the material conditions would change. So, for instance, if Superman can impart anti-gravitational forces to an object--in the same way that he does for himself--then the structural integrity would change.

In SUPERMAN (1978), people questioned how Lois could fly with Superman--as long as she kept contact with him, she could defy gravity in the same way he does. That seems to be one of his powers. Just like some iterations of the Flash can lend speed to others without them burning up.

[stephens2177]

If Cadmus can make a TTK field for kon-el out of Supermans aura,that aura might possibly do the same or something similar.

Even when Supermans cape wasn't invulnerable he would use it to shield ppl or things,and have a aura that can lend protection somehow makes some sense.

I like the aura explanation myself,it simply solves all the anal questions ppl need to complain about with Superman s powers.