I have often thought how neat it would be if people actually did develop super powers(yea, im a geek). Then I have wondered how they would work. You can say I can move things with my mind, but scientifically how would that work?
To move an object you must apply force greater than the mass of that object. How do I generate that force without actually touching something? And I think Newtowns 3rd law states that force always comes in pairs. So if I generate enough force to say, move a person, that force also acts against me. How do I compensate against that if just my mind is doing the work?
As you can tell, physics is not my thing. But I would be curious to hear some peoples ideas on how superpowers could work, in the real world.
You know, I was at comic shop the other day, and I saw a collection of all 5 power rings related to the Green Lanterns (Alan Scotts, Hal Jordan, Sinestro, Power Ring from the Crime Syndicate, and Kyle Rayner.) Anyway, I wonder if you could build a giant battery in space to collect will power and funnel it into a power ring, and if so can I have one.
You know, I haven’t been a comic book geek for well over a decade, but the thought of owning a collection of Power Rings strikes me as a contender for Coolest Thing Ever.
Certain neurons in my brain are fired in a certain configuration producing a thought. Now say that thought could produce some sort of energy that could travel over to your brain. Not entirely impossible from a physics perspective.
The big problem comes when that energy hits your brain. The energy can’t be just some kind of analog of what’s physically going on in my brain, because your brain isn’t organized the same way mine is. At least not identically enough. “Red” may be located in a different cluster of neurons in me than in you. So if that telepathic energy were just a physical analog, then it’ll hit different neurons in you and produce a different experience. You may experience something but not the same thing as I do.
Nope, the only way for telepathy to work at all is if we both have some kind of translator in both our heads that can take a single telepathic signal and map it back to the correct neurons in both our respective brains.
So I would have to have a translator in my head that would take the thought “red,” and code it into some kind of set energy signal. Your brain would likewise have to have a complementary translator that mapped that signal back to the correct neurons in your brain that would produce the experience of “red.”
No, In the case of Peter Parker, a semingly orderdinary Highschool teacher/superhero, he has the ability to lift a car over his head and spin it.
Like the late Johny Carson, he has a super dense concentration of cells in his mussle tissue.
Superpowers are all childhoodd wish-fulfillment, you know. They don’t have to make sense. They should be artistically pleasing, of course. And things get interesting when people start treating them as real elements in an adult fashion. But they fall apart when people try to really rationalize the powers. Buzz words are just so much better (“Unstable molecules, eh Stan Lee?”)
I’ve remarked elsewhere about the development of Superman’s powers – originally inspired (in all likelihood) by Philip Wylie’s “Gladiator” and John Campbell’s stories about a guy from a high-gravity planet, Superman was a really strong guy with tough skin who jumped around from place to place a la The Hulk. Otherwise “able to leap tall buildings” doesn’t even make any sense. It looked goodf in the strips and the comics. But when the Fleischer studios started to make cartoons that showed the process, it looked kinda stupid, so the power was discreetly changed (and was reflected by changes in the radio show and the comics – where Supes started first to hover, then to fly) in the comics. Magical X-ray vision followed as Power Inflation set in. But flying never really made any sense (“super flatulence?” suggest one of my relatives), despite retconning (“telekinesis”)
Other powers weren’t really obvious. Somebody had to invent them. Jack Cole brilliantly came up with the idea of super-stretching, which showed up in others of his comics before he incented Plastic Man and really explored the idea (and arguably did it best). He was promptly ripped off by DC (Elastic Lad, Elastic Lass, Elongated Man), Marvel (Mr. Fantastic), and others, right down to the current Pixar offering (Elasti-Girl). But 100 years ago, nobody had an inkling of this talent.
I suspect the puerile wish-fulfillment natures of super powers, despite its artistic charm and intellectual challenge, made it seem too far-out for a series set in the Real World. So Alan Moore made all of his “super heroes” in Watchmen downright unsuper. Except, of course, for the single example of Dr. Manhattan. And look at how profoundly his mere existence changed world history (he’s really the only reason the world of The Watchmen differs from ours – all changes can be traced to his influence, ultimately). Imagine how much the world would be changed by just two such beings. Or an entire League. And, of course, dr. Manhattan’s changed nature makes him pretty inhuman and detached not only from the whiole of humanity, but from his fellow "costumed adventurers, too. (“They are middle-aged men in costumes. I have nothing in common with them.” he muses. “The morality of my actions eludes me.”)
The thing about super strength, though, is that in order to USE it, you have to have other changes made to your body. When you pick up, say, a bus, the full weight of that bus has to be tugging on your skin at some angle, not to mention compressing it where it rests on you. So, your skin would have to be a lot more resiliant and harder. Also, the cartilage and fluids in your joints would have to be highly resistant to compression and expansion. And of course your skeleton would have to be built to tolerate awesome stress. Imagine the force lifting one bus would exert on one tiny spinal column!
This is why I am often forgiving of “unstated” powers, like the ability of Spider-Man to take a pumpkin bomb at close range that would have killed an ordinary man. His skin is harder than normal, or else his super-strength wouldn’t work.