The Science of Superman

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FistOfThe North
The Nat'l Geographic Channel has a special coming out this Thursday -6/29- on the way Superman would work in the real world.

The program looked pretty good from the commerial presentation., check it out if you can.

Jargon343
What do you mean? Like, the show is gonna be like, 'In reality, it would take Supermans spaceship 13 million years to reach Earth if it were moving at the speed of light'? Or is it gonna be like 'This is how a living creature could theoretically, possibly have X-ray eyes'?

FistOfThe North
Originally posted by Jargon343
What do you mean? Like, the show is gonna be like, 'In reality, it would take Supermans spaceship 13 million years to reach Earth if it were moving at the speed of light'? Or is it gonna be like 'This is how a living creature could theoretically, possibly have X-ray eyes'?

A combo of both. It looked cool. It had computer models of Superman doing what he does and comparing it to real life realities. It'll theories that'll be tested on the show.

Mindship
It's probably based, at least in part, on one of those books, which talks about the science of superheroes.

One obvious candidate will no doubt be how much stronger someone could be on a planet with lower gravity. For example, on the Moon, a person could lift six times as much as on Earth.

Should be a fun show.

Jargon343
Originally posted by Mindship
It's probably based, at least in part, on one of those books, which talks about the science of superheroes.

One obvious candidate will no doubt be how much stronger someone could be on a planet with lower gravity. For example, on the Moon, a person could lift six times as much as on Earth.

Should be a fun show.

Well, not exactly. Objects still have inertia, even if there is less gravity applied to it. It would take a certain amount of force to push something regardless of gravity. There is less gravitational force on the moon but a person is not capable of exerting anymore force on the moon than they are here.

Demas
Just caught it on repeat... it's pretty light on science, almost insultingly so, but it's got some exclusive Returns footage and some interesting comments from writers as well as old-school Superman trivia.

Hard science, this is not, but if Superman is the only way you could get- say a pre-teen to learn about some basic scientific principles, this might be a good show to get them into it.

But taken purely as entertainment it's not too bad... it's produced by Singer and Burns, the same two that worked on the Look Up In The Sky documentary so it has similar staging and beats, though with a bit of a Discovery Channel sloppiness.

GODOFALL1
Its the stupidest thing I've ever seen. It is such a diss on superman. They are saying that if Superman were to fly up to catch you if you were falling off a building, the impact would be greater than if you hit the ground. That is the second dumbest thing I've ever heard(first being that superman would defeat Goku). YOu're telling me the man of steel wouldn't be able to slow down at the right time to catch you, and make sure you're safe. What a stupid ass show.

Mindship
Originally posted by Jargon343
Well, not exactly. Objects still have inertia, even if there is less gravity applied to it. It would take a certain amount of force to push something regardless of gravity. There is less gravitational force on the moon but a person is not capable of exerting anymore force on the moon than they are here.

Quite true, but this is, I believe, the most common type of example these sorts of shows/books usually talk about.

meep-meep
Originally posted by Demas
Just caught it on repeat... it's pretty light on science, almost insultingly so, but it's got some exclusive Returns footage and some interesting comments from writers as well as old-school Superman trivia.

Hard science, this is not, but if Superman is the only way you could get- say a pre-teen to learn about some basic scientific principles, this might be a good show to get them into it.

But taken purely as entertainment it's not too bad... it's produced by Singer and Burns, the same two that worked on the Look Up In The Sky documentary so it has similar staging and beats, though with a bit of a Discovery Channel sloppiness.

Just as I thought. It's merely a ploy to advertise the movie and not much else. Tell me again why this is on the Discovery Channel?

meep-meep
The discovery channel is such garbage.

GODOFALL1
Easy now.....they have documentaries on the Great White Shark that are AWESOME!

GODOFALL1
And poisinous snakes!!!!

Dr. Zaius
For those of you interested in this sort of topic, the best resource to purchase is a book by James KaKalios called the "Physics of Superheroes". It covers some basic physical principles as they relate to feats of superstrength, superspeed, psionics, etc...

The first chapter deals with Golden Age Superman's ability to leap over a 40 story building. It shows you how to calculate the force needed to jump this distance, the intial velocity needed to jump this high, and the initial acceleration through the leaping motion. Cool stuff. It also extrapolates backwards from Superman't Golden Age stength levels and calculates the density of Krypton relative to earth. By the way, its something like 15 or 16 times. For a solid planet to be this dense, KaKalios argues that the planet's core would have to contain an unstable white dwarf fragment or other such sort of exotic stellar material, which, by the way, would also explain the planet's eventual explosion. Pretty cool, huh?

It also goes into lengthy discussions on the Flash and talks about doppler effects, special relativity, and more force/acceleration calculations. Among other things, he calculates how many pounds of pressure the Flash would have to exert against the ground to deccelerate from a measily 500 mph to 0 over 15 ft. Its something like 48,000 lbs! He also calculates how many food calories he would have to eat to run at 1/10 the speed of light for 1 second, assuming all of the calories were converted with 100% efficiency to mechanical energy. Its something like 75 billion!

Great freakin read! Check it out.

benplace
You mean this?
hxxp://files.filefront.com/SOSwmv/;5191618;;/fileinfo.html

Mindship
Yep...they did the gravity thing regarding his strength.

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