A Scientific Paper Explaining Superman's Powers

Ryan North of the webcomic Dinosaur Comics asked his friend Ben Tippett to write a formal paper explaining the coherency of Superman's amazing powers. It's a very math and physics-heavy article, so I won't try to understand, let alone summarize the whole thing. Here, however, is the conclusion:

We conjecture that all of Superman's powers come from His ability to alter the inertial mass of objects in His immediate vicinity or with which He is in personal contact; although the mechanism is unknown.


Link via io9

Image: flickr user chanchan222, used under Creative Commons license.

Let me rephrase my earlier comment of, "Ummm". But how can a paper be scientific if there is no way to prove the information fact or fiction. The fact that this dude has taken the mental ability to try to come up with numbers and data about a character is cool but pointless since nothing will come from it other than fighting over differing beliefs about certain super heros.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Dumb. Reminds me of the old Man of Steel vs Woman of Kleenex story written by Larry Niven in the 70's. In other words, done before.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Many years ago I came across a book called "A Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown" which is full of this sort of thing. Just checked over at Amazon and it is back in print...
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
As it says - the mechanism is unknown... - I don;t quite know who is bored enough to explore the physics of Superman's superpowers but well, we all need to do something. Anyways, I think the analysis of the Superman's superpowers would be really interesting from the point of view of psychological projection of human desires and values into a Superbeing. That would be amazing! Would anyone here be interested?
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
I'm Not Convinced!
Haven't read the whole thing, just the intro/conclusion and it would appear that Superman would be a Telekinetic due to the following: "...alter the inertial mass of objects in His immediate vicinity..." Not buying it, no sir, try again.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Login to comment.
Click here to access all of this post's 13 comments
Email This Post to a Friend
"A Scientific Paper Explaining Superman's Powers"

Separate multiple emails with a comma. Limit 5.

 

Success! Your email has been sent!

close window
X

This website uses cookies.

This website uses cookies to improve user experience. By using this website you consent to all cookies in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

I agree
 
Learn More