Behind Each Superhero and Their Abilities

Category: Energy, Nature, Superman
Last Updated: 16 Feb 2023
Pages: 13 Views: 81

I had first become exposed to the Justice League in my childhood when I would stay up well past my bedtime to watch the cartoon. I knew all the members they showed and I knew all their powers. It was not after I took this course that I started thinking about the science behind each superhero and their powers. Learning about all that we did, I was motivated to dissect the original seven members of the Justice League: Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, Batman, The Flash, Superman, The Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman. The Justice League is a part of the DC Universe, and it has well over 100 members (150 to be exact). Many of those superheroes remain unnoticed simply because of a lack of prevalence. The original seven, however, are the ones whose powers are well known and therefore, a scientific dissection can be more readily made.

These superheroes came from all walks of life, so it makes comparing, contrasting and debunking their powers all the more exciting. The types of questions I asked regarding this are: Are these powers (or something similar) found in nature? Are these powers possible for a human? What would happen to a human if these types of powers were exhibited in their bodies? What prevents a human from being able to harness these powers? If I were to pick one word to describe all that I had found, it would be: interesting. I learned quite a lot of things I did not know even existed in the duration of this presentation and paper.

Beginning with J’onn J’onzz – the Martian Manhunter. An alien from Mars, as the name implies, he had a pleasant life with his family until a series of fires, which also happens to be his weakness, consumed his entire planet. Everyone and everything was gone, except for him – the lone survivor of his race. His planet was destroyed so he took residence on Earth, and quickly became a valuable asset in the Justice League. He has a variety of superpowers, including flight, superhuman strength, invisibility, and shape-shifting. The one that caught my attention was the last one. Collins Dictionary defines shape-shifting as the “ability to change shape or being into that of another person, creature, gender, species or other entity”. This is precisely what the Martian Manhunter is able to do. He can take the form of anything, completely altering his DNA to suit his new form.

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A thing to take note of however is that the Martian Manhunter always has an intermediate form before reaching his final one. For example, in Martian Manhunter Vol. 1 #1 released in May 1988, Martian Manhunter was seen shifting from his original form to a large green dragon. Before he did, there was a form between the two that resembled Green Goblin. In Wonder Woman #125, Martian Manhunter manages to shapeshift into an exact copy of Wonder Woman and phases into her body so his cells align perfectly with hers. The thing to note here is that before he took Diana’s final form, he had to shift from his original form to the shape of a woman, and then finally, the form of Wonder Woman. With that being said, it is obvious his superpowers go to great extents. The question that I asked regarding this was: Where in nature is a phenomenon like this, or at least similar to this found? I found my answer in the ocean.

The Mimic octopus (Thaumoctopus mimicus), named rightly so is a near real-life equivalent to Martian Manhunter. It is relatively small with a height of 2 feet and eight tentacles each measuring 25 inches in length. The Mimic octopus has the unique ability to change its shape, color and even texture. It is virtually able to transform into most of its predators including the sea snake, lionfish, and flatfish. Being highly intelligent and strategic, this octopus uses this “shape-shifting” ability to scare away its own predators by looking like them! How it is able to do this is by the use of small pigment sacs that are littered on its skin, called chromatophores. They contract and expand and thus, the Mimic fools its predators.

Before he was known as Aquaman, he was a seemingly normal human called Arthur Curry. It was not until he reached of age that the lost underwater city of Atlantis returned, looking for him. The product of the queen of Atlantis and a lighthouse keeper, Aquaman became the rightful king of Atlantis. He has interesting powers, which include breathing/diving deep underwater, swimming at superhuman speeds, impenetrable skin, and his most renowned, telepathically communicating with sea life. Being the butt-end of many jokes, Aquaman holds his own with the Justice League. The one superpower of his that I would like to talk about is his ability to dive deep into the ocean. According to the comics, Atlantis is located “at depths no diver has ever penetrated”. So that led me to ask the question: What is the deepest a diver has gone into the ocean?

The results that came up were shocking. The Guinness Record for the deepest a diver has gone with the proper breathing apparatus is 1,090 feet, held by Ahmed Gabr. What was even more shocking is the depth a diver has gone without ANY breathing apparatus – 830 feet, held by Herbert Nitsch. Free diving is a sport where people dive into the ocean, without a body suit or oxygen tank. The only things they carry (some divers, not all) are a pair of flippers and goggles. This is extremely dangerous and is bound to have negative both physiological and psychological effects on the human body. This was proven true as I furthered my research. It is evident that the number one problem any diver faces is pressure. Underwater, weight affects diver at all sides equally and increases at a rate of 0.447 psi per foot of seawater, so the deeper you go, the higher the pressure will be. The opposite occurs on top of a mountain or in outer space.

Ear problems are the most common. They occur when there is an imbalance of air outside of the body versus inside the body, specifically, the ears. The same problem is seen when sitting on an airplane during ascent and descent. The elimination of this problem involves “popping” the ears or equalizing the air pressure between the two mediums. With the reduction of oxygen and increase of pressure during descent, the lungs compress and the body begins absorbing nitrogen. Even though nitrogen constitutes about 79% of the air we breathe, at depths, it, as well as oxygen and carbon dioxide become narcotic. As the nitrogen seeps into the body tissues, this ultimately has the potential of leading to nitrogen narcosis. Nitrogen narcosis is an altered state of mind. The diver becomes quite loopy and can begin hallucinating. A diver can begin experiencing this at a depth of 100 feet (Gibb, 2018). To be cured, the diver simply needs to get his or her pressure back to normal and the effect will soon wear off.

Probably the most infamous result of diving is decompression sickness, or “the bends”. As the diver comes back, it must be a slow process because all the nitrogen that had been absorbed by the body has becomes bubbles inside and if the ascent is too fast, those bubbles will burst and the result is painful embolisms. Any part of the body can be affected including, the lungs, brain, heart and joints. The cure for this is a bit more complicated. A diver suffering from the bends will be taken to the hospital immediately and placed in a hyperbaric chamber for a couple days where they will be administered high-flow oxygen and IV fluids. They are kept in this specialized chamber for recompression to prevent further bubble formation.

Next in line, we have Batman. Famous for not having any powers and being the only human in the Justice League, Bruce Wayne finds his abilities through his million-dollar suit and high-tech gadgets. Traumatized as a child at the murder of his parents right before his eyes, Bruce Wayne took up the role as Batman to fight crime. He has a tough suit made out of Kevlar, but I found his weapons to be more of an interest. They include his Batmobile, Batarangs, and lastly, his Batglider – his cape. Many times in the Dark Knight trilogy was Batman seen jumping off skyscrapers and using his cape not to fly, but glide. A cape would help his descent be smooth versus a hard fall when he lands, but is the cape that is portrayed in the films and comics sufficient to allow gliding motion? Batman’s cape is usually shown as not very big, so I decided to do that math to find what size his cape would have to be for him to glide.

Batman’s cape should allow him to glide more horizontally than he descends vertically. We can assume that his cape has a glide ratio of 7.5 feet for every 1 foot. So if Batman’s mass is 95 kilograms and he starts running at a speed of 9 meters/second, then the force of gravity pushing up on his cape must equal the force of gravity pulling him down. For example, if Batman’s glide angle is between 5° - 20°, the least amount of surface area his cape would need to keep him up is about 13 m2, or 140 feet. 140 feet is also coincidentally, the size of a hang-glider. With this being established, it is clear that Batman’s current cape is not only much too small, but it is also the incorrect shape. Originally, it is in the rough, triangular outline of a bat, but in order for him to glide efficiently, and at all, it must be a semi-circle. The Batglider would have to have a diameter of 5.6 m (18.4 ft.). While Batman’s cape is neither of those things, in reality and according to physics, Batman would have been long dead by now jumping off buildings.

The Flash is one of the more charismatic ones in the bunch. A former human and forensic scientist, Barry Allen was involved in a freak accident where a lightning bolt knocked over a shelf of chemicals onto him and the product was The Flash. His only power is super speed, and that seems to be enough for him considering The Flash is able to travel at speeds like 186,000 miles per second, which is also, coincidentally, the speed of light. Sometimes going even faster than that, he has been known to break every barrier, including sound, light, and air. Traveling at these speeds is obviously impossible for anyone or anything, so I decided to find out what was the closest humans, land mammals, and fish got. Usain Bolt is the fastest human ‘til date, with a speed of 27 MPH. A cheetah runs at speeds of 72 MPH (Planet Science).

A sailfish swims at the impressive speed of 70 MPH (Speed of Animals). A stark difference can be seen between the two animals and a human. This led me to the question: Why can’t humans run faster? After some research, I discovered that it was simply not in our anatomy. A cheetah was simply built to run given its flexible skeletal design. A sailfish’s streamlining helps it zip past the currents and through the water. Humans however were not built to run. One reason is our bipedalism. Another, and the one that I am going to focus on, is because of our brains. Our brains have no support whatsoever if we were to travel at such speeds. Our organ would crash around inside our skull and eventually liquefy, turning to mush.

With that knowledge secure, I stumbled across a very fascinating feature in a relatively common bird – a Woodpecker. This amazing bird is able to peck 20 times per second and experience forces between 1,200-1,400 g’s (acceleration of gravity). Just for reference, a roller coaster is generally around 5 g’s. Woodpeckers sustain no injury, no trauma, no headaches and the reason for that is in their specialized biophysical adaptation. These birds have sharp beaks with upper and lower components that move independently of each other while they peck. They also have a long and thin tongue that thickens as it curls around their brain and the woodpecker’s tongue is what ultimately cushions their brains! Yet another impressive biophysical adaptation is their skull, which unlike what a human has, acts as a shock absorber from the forces they experience when they peck.

As if all these incredible adaptations were not enough, the woodpecker also has a third inner eyelid that keeps its eyeballs from popping out – something that is to be expected from forces like the ones they move at. Although these birds keep their eyes closed whilst pecking to keep debris from flying in, this third eyelid acts as an extra layer of protection to keep the eyes in place. Superman is probably the most celebrated superhero of all time. He is known worldwide for his super strength, flight, x-ray vision and heat vision and his famous red and blue suit. He may look like a handsome, normal human, but he is in fact, an alien from the planet of Krypton. Named Kal-El by his parents, as a baby, he was rocketed to Earth by his father after his planet came under attack. On Earth, he was raised by a farmer couple as Clark Kent. Superman’s infamous weakness is green kryptonite. Upon contact, he grows extremely weak and even loses his powers.

Analyzing Superman’s powers, the one that caught my attention was his heat vision. It is a well-known scene in the comics, TV shows, and movies of red lasers (or fire) coming out of Superman’s eyes. Upon further research, his heat vision is a release of absorbed solar energy. Since Superman is not a human, his alien cells have the ability to absorb and metabolize electromagnetic energy from the sun. This opened up a ton of possibilities concerning this particular superpower of Superman’s. I was lead to three questions: How much energy does the sun put out? How much of Superman can absorb it? What extent can his heat vision go to? My first question asked how much energy the sun emits. After research, I found that in total, the star gives off 380 yottajules (1026) of energy per second. Out of this gargantuan amount, a measly 100 petajoules (1015) reached Earth.

The Earth is about 93 million miles away from the sun. With that being said, every square meter of our planet is receiving 1,400 joules of energy per second. Now my second question asked was how much of Superman can absorb solar energy. The average human body has about two square meters of skin covering it (Melina, 2011). We can assume that all of Superman’s body surface area absorbs sunlight, including radiation such as ultraviolet light and x-ray. Therefore, Superman could be receiving about 2,800 watts of power at any given time. He is a living solar battery. If Superman lacked the ability to store this solar energy in his body and there was an amperage of 10 amperes, he would need to be carrying around a 280-volt battery with him to be able to sustain all the energy he is able to receive from the sun.

Of course, if Superman were not super he would have died rather quickly from a voltage so high. People have been electrocuted by household appliances that reach 100-volts and industrial electrical appliances with a direct current of only 42-volts. Good thing Superman is an alien and not a human. The last question asked was to what extent could Superman’s heat vision go? Hours after doing the painstaking math, I found that after 1 minute, Superman would be generating about 168 kilojoules (103) of energy. For reference, that is the equivalent of powering a household heater or air conditioner. After 1 hour, he would be generating about 10 milijoules (106) of energy. For reference, this is the amount of energy it takes to power a small hospital. After 24 hours, Superman is generating a whopping 240 mJ of energy, which is the equivalent of powering 10 hospitals. Lastly, after 5 days, he is generating about 1 gigajoule of energy, which is the equivalent of the power in a lightning bolt, if not slightly more. Needless to say, this capability is incredible.

Next up, we have the Green Lantern. A bit about him, before he became this green superhero, he used to be a disgruntled pilot, carrying bitterness with him at the death of his father. Hal Jordan was in the woods one night when he sees something fall from the sky. After a closer inspection, he discovers a dying alien, crashed onto Earth. Chosen by that alien, Hal becomes its successor and thus gains his membership in the Green Lantern Corps. An intergalactic police force, they maintain the peace in outer space. It was close work with the Justice League that the Green Lantern eventually joined them. He gets his powers from his ring. He is able to take flight, and more importantly, he is able to create constructs made out of pure energy. One thing to note, however, and one that caught my attention, is the Green Lantern’s weakness to the color yellow.

Taking a deeper look into this, the ring, mentioned earlier, that every Green Lantern holds runs on willpower. For example, a newer recruit would not be able to create constructs as big as someone who has been a Green Lantern for years. The rings eventually need to be recharged so in order to do so, a Green Lantern Power Battery is needed. That is ultimately connected to the Central Power Battery. Parallax, our villain, is known as a “parasitic emotional entity” that fed off fear. When it was discovered, it was trapped in the Central Power Battery because the opposite of fear is, of course, willpower. Since all the Green Lanterns drew their powers from the Central Power Battery, Parallax created something called the “Yellow Impurity”. This then affected every Green Lantern who drew power from the Battery and made it so their powers are useless against anything that is colored yellow.

Now, in order to makes sense of this conundrum and even find a loophole, if you will, I looked at a number of different concepts. Color, we know, is a specific wavelength of light in the visible spectrum. Light, much like sound, can be a victim of the Doppler Effect. The Doppler Effect is what causes the received frequency of some source to be different from the sent frequency when there is increasing or decreasing motion (Northwestern). For example, an ambulance will sound different coming towards someone versus moving away from someone. In astronomical scales, the color of stars can tell relative motion so the observer sees something different. For example, a star moving away from the earth is red-shifted, and a star moving towards the earth is blue-shifted. With this being established, Green Lantern then is theoretically able to shift the color emitted from the ring relative to the observer.

For example, let us say that it is Green Lantern’s wish to move a banana, but he cannot because it is yellow. What he can do instead is “cheat the system”. If Green Lantern fires a beam from his ring at the banana, and flies away at the same time and fast enough, the beam would ultimately appear yellow to someone standing behind the banana, thus moving the banana! All the colors would move up a notch, blue becomes green and yellow becomes orange. So the question that remains is why does the Green Lantern not use this method? Well, it is because it is extremely inefficient. This method would require him to move at the speed of light, and it was already established that no one can do that in the DC Universe, save for the Flash. The Green Lanterns.

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Behind Each Superhero and Their Abilities. (2023, Feb 16). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/behind-each-superhero-and-their-abilities/

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