Alright, here's the evidence, folks!
YouTube videoAt 1:36 the plane casually smashes into the World Engine. Distance from plane to point of impact is 89 units. I'm going to go high end and say it's a C-17 Globemaster III, which is 53 meters long. The length of the plane is 23 units, and the distance between the plane and the WE is 103 units. From there, we get 237.4 meters. The Globemaster covers that distance in about 1.1 seconds.
Distance: 237.4 meters
Time: 1.1 seconds
Speed: 215.45 m/s
The max takeoff weight of an Globemaster III is 265,350 kg, or 265,350,000 g.
KE= (1/2)*(265,350g)*(215.45m/s)^2
KE=6,158,601,400 joules
TNT equivalent= .00147 kilotons.Again, not very impressive. A decisively small (relatively) amount of kinetic energy easily punctures through the side of the World Eater, where the armor should be the hardest. It should be noted that Supes also hit it from the bottom, where it was wide open. Also to be noted is that I used the highest end numbers I could find. Using a more reasonable aircraft decreases the yield by an order of magnitude.
He gets hit at less than sonic speeds into a building and doesn't get up for another 9 seconds
YouTube video
then escaping said falling building he goes tumbling into the ground
Not only that Superman clearly was not going that fast into the world engine, he was slowed down by a large extent and it still collapsed.Here's how it works.
Lets say Superman was applying 10 in force. The world Engine was applying 7 in force. The engine decreased Superman's speed by a lot given he went way below sub-sonic.
(80 - 100 mph?)10 - 7 = 3
So by this math the World Engine can be damaged with a minimum of 3 in force. This logic proves how the World Engine is not a very durable structure. Simple math.
[b/Good god, the physics in this thread. Alright, first of all, if you think you can get 1.47 kilotons from a FREAKING JET PLANE, you need to seriously reevaluate your math.You use kilograms if you want to use meters per second and joules. This downscales you to about 6 gigajoules, keeping speed constant.[/b]
Oh, shit, I knew something was wrong. Now I feel terrible, since I'm minoring a physics degree 🙁. It's been too long since I did simple energy problems.
It doesn't matter. Just divide all my yields by 1,000.
More evidence:
YouTube video
Superman starts flying at 0:45, hits WE at 1:01.
Extrapolating from the destruction scene I posted earlier, the World Engine’s height is around
603.26 meters. And it really shouldn’t be, since its legs are outstretched.
Distance: 603.26 meters
Time: 16 seconds
Average Speed: 37.7 m/s
Taking acceleration into consideration, I have generously doubled the speed to use for final velocity.
Doubled speed: 75.4 m/s
Superman’s mass: 225 kg
KE= (1/2)*(225kg)*(75.4m/s)^2
KE= 639,580,500 joules
TNT equivalent: 0.000000153 kilotons.
Even if it was 24 hours, it's still an incredible speed feet. Assuming he can somehow alter 1 square mile of the moon per second as a free action (ridiculous! But we're lowballing so...), and supposing that only 10% of the moon's surface was altered he still travels 890,000 miles in 24 hours, that's > 10 miles per second (that's about 2 tons of KE for a 75 kg adult). Given the completely ridiculous assumption that him simply flying in a straight line over a square mile of the moon changes it like that.