The weirdest things irk me sometimes. I guess that’s just human nature — we all have little pet peeves or things that stick in our craws that don’t bother others. It’s what makes us deliciously unique as people.
One of those things that has really bothered me lately is the portrayal of, and the attempt to explain, super speed.
A couple of weeks ago on the seventh episode of Smallville, Lana Lang temporarily gained super powers to rival those of her boyfriend, Clark Kent. There was a throwaway line of dialogue from Lana that she said after she first got her powers that set me off. After they ran around the farm at super speeds Lana mentioned how she was moving at normal speed but everything else in the world was almost frozen in place. This has been the standard portrayal of super speed on Smallville — every time Clark does anything really fast the world would slow down and he would move pretty much at normal speed. This is what I like to call “The Super Speed Problem”, and as far as I know it has never really been addressed anywhere to my satisfaction.
Now, I’m not a fancy fictional scientist but when you move at super speed, I would think that there would be two options: (1) You move at normal speed and the rest of the world slows down; (2) You move fast but your brain processes information quicker and you are able to comprehend the world at super fast speed. Smallville seems to take the option one approach. I have seen both approaches portrayed in comics books and as far as I know, for a character like The Flash, the basics of what the word is like for him when he is moving fast has never really been officially nailed down.
Oh, and just to head things off at the pass, this is not actual science. I understand that.
For my money the only explanation that makes any sense is option 2 — that the brain speeds up and allows for the super fast processing of information to go along with the super fast movement. Option 1, I find maddeningly riddled with problems (again, not actual science). One of the hallmark gags with super speed is when a character with super speed looks to impress a normal person by running off to pick them some flowers from some exotic country, or to grab take out dinner from Italy or France or some place suitably far away and impressive. Option 1 says that that person ran to France at normal speed while the world slowed down around them. Are you kidding me? No one needs to get laid that badly. Let’s say you are Wally West looking to pick up some fresh baguettes from Paris for your wife Linda. To Linda’s mind, her husband is gone for like 20 seconds, but to Wally he’s going to be gone for many months, right? How long does it take to run like 5,000 miles and back? Wouldn’t Wally reappear in front of Linda with a full beard and smelling pretty awful? And what about when there is some disaster clear across the country that The Flash zips off to avert? Running at normal speed he is not going to get to California from Central City for like a month, his time.
And that’s not even mentioning the whole aging conundrum. If the world slows down for speedsters, but they move around as they would normally, that means they would be aging much more rapidly than everyone else. If The Flash lives a month’s time in the blink of an eye, he’s going to be running with a walker by the end of the week.
Now I realize that this is all super hero comics and that none of the super powers make any kind of logical sense (hello, flying without wings), but I wouldn’t have a problem with it if they didn’t try to explain super speed and if their explanations just didn’t make any sense to me. The writers just need to let it be. We all accept that The Flash or Superman can move at super fast speeds without really thinking about the scientific ramifications of it — that is until they start trying to explain how everything works and then you get people like me getting all frustrated and yelling at their TV.
I’m not crazy.
This has been an extra special glimpse into my head.
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Holy shit. I never even thought of it that way. I mean, the perception of the speedster while everything is slowed down. Good thoughts.
i think its a combination of the two, they speed up, brain and all, while it appears to them that the world has slowed down. in my mind, and i am a fictional scientist, its the only plausible hypothesis.
Ok maybe I am not understanding exactly what the 2 options that you listed meant, but you make the argument that they move at a normal pace and the world slows/stops around them. I don’t think that is what they do on Smallville or any other medium with a speed character. I think that is just the only way to show just how fast they move through a camera lens or comic panel. Imagine if you could run or move that fast, then it would seem like the world had stopped around you. It would seem like you teleported to a normal person and to a speedster the world would seem to stop while you use your power. It wouldn’t be like months had passed in your world at all.
Anyway, just my thoughts. Great Topic!!
I don’t think it is that the character is experiencing normal time, exactly. What is all that stuff Einstein was talking about with faster than light travel? I think what is occurring is that Clark is moving so fast that the light from the world around him taking longer to reach his perception (and the camera’s lens) so it just appears that everything is moving slow. And wouldn’t moving fast have the opposite effect, the world around the speedster would get older while his age would stay the same. Isn’t that time dilation? Does that make sense?
There was an episode of the Justice League cartoon that dealt with this issue. Each of the heroes was being subjected to their worst fear. The Flash’s fear was that he could never turn off his superspeed. He would live out his entire life in the time it takes most people to brush their teeth (he phrased it similarly).
A couple weeks ago there was an episode of podcast called Radio Lab that dealt with issues of time, which I think could be relevant here.
In Peter David’s original X-Factor run (worth doubling back for if you haven’t read it) one of the standout moments for me was a scene where Quicksilver is taken to task for his bad attitude and finally explains that his mind is working so much faster than everyone else’s that slowing down to interact with normal-speed people is almost intolerable. It was one of the best explorations of speed powers I can remember reading in a comic.
Super Speed running is just a silly concept to begin with. How does it negate the laws of physics? I mean they’d go into orbit the first time they ran up a hill. And how do they dodge obstacles? I mean I’ve ridden my motorcycle at 140, and shot comes at you faster than you can react, even hundreds of yards away. Multiply that times 20,000, sorry I dont care how fast your brains reacting, your a squishie inside the first ten miles.
The whole concept is silly.
And I wont even ask how your two theories explain vibrating through walls….
Believe it or not you picked a topic that I have spent a lot of time thinking on. My conclusions are that there are not the two options as stated in your post but rather they are the same and only explanation. In order to move at such an incredible rate of speed one’s brain has to speed up in order to control those movements otherwise the hero would end up only able to move in straight lines often bumping into walls having to slow down in order to think of his next move. So this increased brain function would mean an increased rate of perception in essence seeing the world slowed would be an exceptable approximation of what the hero sees. This does bring about the problem of the hero’s world being limited to running like normal in a frozen land. I don’t think that this would lead to problems of premature aging because it is merely a perception of altered time and not really a shift in the flow of time. The bigger problems would be sleeping and refueling. In the comics world one can dismiss normal fatigue but the need to refuel by eating would be the ever constant flaw. Either way it does seem to be a life of constant running taking up a lot of perceived time.
Wouldn’t the sheer friction burn off their skin too?
I was just going to say the same thing as jestergoblin. Friction would instantly leave their clothes and skin in shreds. Runners who take hours to finishing a marathon worry about chafing and that is only 26.2 miles. Imagine what kind of nipple chafing you would get running 5000 miles in 20 seconds.
They get super scientific designed clothing. All superhero clothing is ridiculous. It’s a conceit we all deal with.
A speedster’s skin physiology is likely adapted along with his ability to be fast.
Either way, these are both branches that get away from the main topic.
Perhaps Quicksilver really is dealing with the world at superspeed, and it makes him cranky. But then, Wally West has a different type of speed, and he perceives things in a different way.
Believe it or not you picked a topic that I have spent a lot of time thinking on. My conclusions are that there are not the two options as stated in your post but rather they are the same and only explanation. In order to move at such an incredible rate of speed one’s brain has to speed up in order to control those movements otherwise the hero would end up only able to move in straight lines often bumping into walls having to slow down in order to think of his next move. So this increased brain function would mean an increased rate of perception in essence seeing the world slowed would be an exceptable approximation of what the hero sees. This does bring about the problem of the hero’s world being limited to running like normal in a frozen land. I don’t think that this would lead to problems of premature aging because it is merely a perception of altered time and not really a shift in the flow of time. The bigger problems would be sleeping and refueling. In the comics world one can dismiss normal fatigue but the need to refuel by eating would be the ever constant flaw. Either way it does seem to be a life of constant running taking up a lot of perceived time.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mark Waid checking in! 😀
I actually agree with this. It’s been a while since I watched Smallville, but I think they show the slowed-down stuff to show us what Clark (or whoever) sees, but when they show the flashes and streaks and whatever, that’s what the rest of the world sees. I don’t think it’s really one or the other, but both.
It seems to me that it’s got to be option 2, and the brain speeds up. The question for me is, does the brain actually slow down when the Flash stops running, or Superman stops flying at high speeds? That seems strange to me. And if it doesn’t, then these heroes should always be able to out-think everyone, having a lot more “time” to do it in.
About flying, this is why the Hulk’s “flying” makes more sense, and the way Thor’s flying used to be portrayed. The Hulk jumps, he doesn’t fly. I think this was the case with Superman originally, maybe? Someone help me out. And for Thor, it used to be that he would hurl his Hammer, and hold on for the ride. Much cooler.
Ok maybe I am not understanding exactly what the 2 options that you listed meant, but you make the argument that they move at a normal pace and the world slows/stops around them. I don’t think that is what they do on Smallville or any other medium with a speed character.
From the third paragraph:
“A couple of weeks ago on the seventh episode of Smallville, Lana Lang temporarily gained super powers to rival those of her boyfriend, Clark Kent. There was a throwaway line of dialogue from Lana that she said after she first got her powers that set me off. After they ran around the farm at super speeds Lana mentioned how she was moving at normal speed but everything else in the world was almost frozen in place. “
I can’t remember ever being this excited to post of a forum. Bravo Conor.
Here goes *cracks knuckles dramatically*…
There was an issue of the Flash that Geoff Johns wrote where Flash is trying to outrun Superman. The Flash’s inner monologue mentions how it seems Superman is using his super strong legs to propel him at enormous speed. He doesn’t have to worry about hitting anything because he’s invulnerable and since everything about him is “super” his brain is super enough to keep up with the information output. How he flies at the same speed is beyond me.
Quicksilver is a mutant. I think his legs are really strong and his metabolism is really high. His brain is probably stuck in high gear, poor bastard.
Flash is more complicated. I think it all comes down to Einstein’s theory of relativity. At speeds approaching the speed of light (3*10^8 m/s) relativistic effects kick in. To the outside world the flash would just be a blur, because he’s moving relative to us and the normal speed world. To the Flash time would have to move slower as he approached the speed of light (other crazy stuff would happen to but that can be neglected). However, he’s still moving incredibly fast regardless of how he perceives it. Think about how far one step would carry you at that speed. Running from Central City to Paris could be as easy as a 100m dash if every step carries you miles. I think the enigmatic “speed force” fills in alot of gaps about how his brain can process the information, because the brain is quick but can’t function as fast as it would have to. The entire nature of human’s traveling at super-speed is inherently paradoxical so I’m happy to let the “speed force” turn off the scientific portion of my brain.
And Lana Lang is clearly a moron.
It still doesn’t explain why the Flash still has lips on his face. Mine get chapped if it’s a little windy out and cold, I’d hate to know what going faster than sound does to an exposed mouth.
He’s a metahuman. His body works different than yours. It’s tougher.
Here’s a similar (in spirit, at least) question, one that’s “bugged” me in much the same way for a long time.
How would super strong characters like Superman have all these muscles?
Big muscles are built through resistance training, basically– repeatedly subjecting the muscles to resistance from heavy weights, forcing tiny little tears in the muscles, which the body then repairs, making the muscle grow. Oh, and getting plenty of protein and calories to fuel the growth.
But, on a day to day or week to week basis, are these super strong characters actually encountering anything near enough resistance to their muscles, to cause them to get big and stay big…?
A corollary to this: how exactly is Batman, as so often drawn since what, the 90s– so freakin’ big? How could he that musclebound and still perform the high-flying acrobatics? And how could he maintain that muscle size? It would seem that his schedule would prevent him from working out enough, heavy enough, and having enough of a caloric surplus each day. The numerous injuries alone would seem to prevent the necessary weight training.
Not to mention his aesthetic would be all thrown off by the inevitable muscle tears, etc. He’d be a mess– not the huge and perfectly symmetrical specimen we often see.
Well, he’s the goddamn Batman.
Lana is an idiot–they move faster–it is the only plausible explanation–if the world slowed down that would mean it stopped moving or the day would go on and hours would pass by. So, either Flash has the power to stop everyone and everything’s movement–including the planet, or he just moves faster. I think moving faster is a little easier to explain.
Also, if someone or thing slowed or stopped the world, we would all be dead because the planet actually turns at a pretty good clip and suddenly stopping so that Clark and Lana can hump at super-speed would be disastrous.
Why can’t they just say, he’s super-fast and leave it at that.
Great insight on the situation.
Option 1 wouldn’t be a superpower but a supercurse…
On Spider-man 1 movie, from Peter’s P.O.V Flash’s fists are coming very slow at him, but he seems surprised. From an outside shot the world doesn’t look affected ( I think the same happens at the matrix, the famous bullet scene where trinity “how did you move so fast”, when actually we are seeing it slow.
Ha ha! This made me remember a phrase from South Park Goobacks from the future episode.
“The time portal he took is said to follow
Terminator rules, as it is a one-way portal. As opposed to the two-way Back to the
Future rules, or Timerider
rules which are “just plain silly”.
I don’t think Spider-man is showing superspeed in the movies. It is his spider-sense at work. What I think is going on there is time slows down and the camera spins to various objects/actions in the room, because his spider-sense is making Peter aware of those objects/actions. Quicker spider-like reflexes are in his movements, but that isn’t necessarily superspeed like The Flash and Superman possess.
Yes. But isn’t the principle the same?
Even back in the day when Barry Allen got his powers from a rack of chemicals being hit by lightning the writers talked about him having a protective aura which kept him from burning up with friction. This aura would expand to include anything or anyone he carried.
I recall an episode of The Wild, Wild West which had the superspeed villain vaporize in flame because James West managed to dowse him in lamp oil which friction ignited.
This is why the introduction of the Speed Force into the Flash mythos was a good thing. It’s very close to saying, “It’s magic. Go with it.” That takes care of the aging thing and most everything else.
For the record, I thought the Thor thing was ridiculous even as a kid.
He winds up and throws his hammer then grabs onto its thong to be carried along? And for a long trip, how does he know which direction to throw it or if he sees a villain up to something he has to land wherever the original throw took him then turnaround and throw again but not as hard?
Stan, what would be so wrong with with “The hammer of Thor grants me the power of storms whose winds will carry me aloft!”
Wonderfu, fun topic, funny fun topic from Conor!
I would diiagram the situation from not 2 points but 3:
1) The perspective of the speedster
2) The perspecive of the people around him
(and very important)
3) The perspective of the reader/view of the comic/film.
Conor’s justified complaint then falls between (2) and (3) – writers needlessly explaining in words what is best rendered in visuals.
I’m not the most consistent of comics historians, but I believe that Dan Barry, who first did the character of Johnny Quick was teh first to portray multiple images of JQ in the same frame as he speeded up. I can’t say when they portrayed the Flash’s high speed movement as multiple outlines in a single frame rather than just “motion lines”; The artist on Daredevil portrayed his very fast acrobatic movements as multiple drawings of DD in a single frame from the very beginning, but that should be checked.
On TV, The Six Million Dollar Man and Kung Fu in the 70s used slow motion for the high speed scenes – a rather primitive (but somewhat effective) way to get across the “drama” of high speed.
(I think) this is all a precursor to The Martix’s use of “bullet time” which is now used in Smallville in some form.
In either case, its always been experiments in rendering in visuals high speed, and I think you could turn your mind inside out trying to figure out the “physics” of it – it’s mostly been great advancements in portraying high speed visually, and as Conor says, the psuedo scientific explanations are rather useless (although I tend to favor the combination of (1) and (2), with (3) the viewer/reader’s perception being most important. I tend to just surrender to (3) if its done well, and not cheesy.
And Quicksilver – he’d always been cranky – for (I suspect) many other reasons…
All I know is that in one issue of Kingdom Come (the first?) the Flash is described as “A man who lives in a world of statues”, or something like that.
I always loved that POETICALLY but never took it as factual description.
There’s obviously a problem in trying to explain powers like this. You could even get into things like “Okay, so a super character was hurt by a giant ball weighing 2000 lbs landing on him, and yet that character is shown lifting an object that weighs more than that, which would put a far greater strain on his comparatively little shoulders..” etc.
My guess, if we really want to understand this, is that the same “zone” the character gets into when using super speed also prevents his mind from getting bored while “walking” to Italy to get a pizza. While traveling, the speedster may take in the details of his environment as if he were interacting in it for five months, but nonetheless he doesn’t feel that five months have passed.
Interacting with statues while you perceive time in real-time, that’s called “stopping time” or “slowing time”, not having super speed. There’s a difference. And I suggest that when Smallville or some other television program uses real-time that way–it’s just a metaphor for what super-speed REALLY is.
We’re nerds.
“I’m not crazy.”
You’re a little crazy.
You’re conflating the “science” of super-speed with the subjective experience of the speedster. From the speedster’s perspective, options 1 and 2 are the same thing — the person is moving so quickly that movement by someone else is virtually imperceptible.
But however Lana describes the experience, in reality (meaning in fictionality) she’s just moving very, very fast.
You’re conflating the “science” of super-speed with the subjective experience of the speedster. From the speedster’s perspective, options 1 and 2 are the same thing — the person is moving so quickly that movement by someone else is virtually imperceptible.
I know that. What I’m saying is that from the speedster’s prospective they are going to be running for months at a time if, to them, they are moving at normal speed and that’s dumb. The writer’s shouldn’t attempt to explain this stuff.
What I’m saying is that from the speedster’s prospective they are going to be running for months at a time if, to them, they are moving at normal speed and that’s dumb.
But they’re not running for months at a time. They’re moving super-fast and they know they’re moving super-fast.
The writer’s shouldn’t attempt to explain this stuff.
They had Lana attempt to explain it, and it appears that Lana isn’t very articulate.
But they’re not running for months at a time. They’re moving super-fast and they know they’re moving super-fast.
Not if they appear to be moving at normal speed, which is how it has been explained.
Lana is a garden slug.
so, if i was a speedster and i was running across the pacific ocean, it would take me forever to get to where i wanted to go because to me, i would be moving at a normal pace while the world around me had slowed down. that would suck. wouldn’t i have to age much more quickly? this raises too many questions!!
or maybe im just an idiot
I like to think they
whether this has any baring on the topic, I don’t know: reading all these explanations make think of quick athletes, particularly point gaurds. Steve Nash or Baron Davis have very fast reflexes compared to a normal person. They can react to a pass that would probably hit most of us in our face or at least bounce off our hands. Also, being point gaurds, they can be running top speed, see a tiny opening, do some quick juke/dribble move and thread the needle with the ball with movements that exceed normal reflexes and vision. That part of their brain moves way faster than mine in that those situations. So I can see a similarity with super speedsters (times about 1000).
“To Linda’s mind, her husband is gone for like 20 seconds, but to Wally he’s going to be gone for many months, right? How long does it take to run like 5,000 miles and back? Wouldn’t Wally reappear in front of Linda with a full beard and smelling pretty awful?”
A speedster’s perception doesn’t change the fact that he’s still moving through the same time and space as everyone else.
Pseudo-science class is easy!
Further questions can be deferred to a recording of John Byrne explaining Superman’s secret forcefield!
Ray Palmer, the Atom, was constantly punching crooks or jumping on them with “the weight and force of a 200 lb. man.” Have a full grown man sit on you …nevermind, put 200 lbs of weight, forget it, put a 100 lb. weight on your chest. Not a huge problem. Now try putting that weight on a needle (the size of the Atom’s fist) and put the needle on your chest. So if the Atom punched a crook his arm would sink into the guy’s jaw. And who cleaned up that mess on the bottom of the ark
This discussion reminds me of a book that I read a couple years ago. It was this book by some physicist that explained the X-Men’s powers through science. It was kind of interesting, but I sort of lost interest when he started solving complex physics equations.
Still, a scientific take on the fantastic always makes for good discussion.
As for super speed: I believe the outside world percevies a blur, while the super speedster perceives us standing still as they run. Time is relative in that it all happens at once.
Does this make sense?
Let’s say the speed of the earth is X and we all live at this speed. It’s a constant. Now if we could believe a speedster somehow change his/her perception of reality and we could say that their fast speed is now Y. So while the speedster moves in speed Y, we in speed X can say, ‘holy crap that guy is fast’, but really they just changed their perception of reality… (sorta matrixy id say)
Now time as we know it moves as X. In our time X, there are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour… etc…. Time is always constant, no matter what speed we perceive the earth to move in. So if the flash was to run to france and it took him 2 seconds (1 to get there and 1 to get back) then his body would have experienced 2 seconds of our time X just like everyone else. It just so happens that in time Y the amount of time to get there (lets say 1 month of running) would equal to time X as 1 second.
just a thought…..
If I took a supersonic jet to France, I’d be travelling a lot faster than you could run. That’s where the coolness of super speed comes from, running faster than the fastest rocket. That leads to the picking tulips in Amsterdam for a lunch surprise in Burbank, CA.
Running so fast, passing people “as if they are standing still.”
The weirder stuff, multiple images, plucking bullets out of the air, vibrating through walls, creating tornadoes with an arm — is all much dicier to explain away but I wouldn’t want to lose it in Flash stories (although I wouldn’t notice since I dropped the Flash after the last issue, before the cockroach arms on the kid).
Conor, Bravo for taking on this topic. I too have to admit to occasionally getting lost on super-speed. For instance, Bart (as Impulse) was always doing impulsive stuff, because the explanation was that his mind was going so fast that he just did things without thinking through to the end results. But if he was thinking so much faster, wouldn’t he also reach the end of the thought process as well and really be four (or five or ten) steps ahead of everyone else? I guess this could just be a personality quirk of his, but it seems like it was always explained as a symptom of his super speed.
It also bothers me (but only a little) when they have the Flash read books really fast to get a lot of information in a just a few seconds. I don’t know why, but running around the world in two seconds is “plausible” to me (in a comics sense), but reading through an entire law library in even a minute is kind of a stretch.
It’s the difference between thinking and doing. And yes, if you’re doing things fast, you have to react fast too, but that’s twitch reflexes, not higher-level cognition or thought processes. Conor is right that if your thought processes were really amped up to that degree, then running to China would actually feel like it was taking a REAAAAALLLY long time, even if it was only a second in real time. And that would just be maddening.
“Conor is right that if your thought processes were really amped up to that degree, then running to China would actually feel like it was taking a REAAAAALLLY long time, even if it was only a second in real time. And that would just be maddening.”
This makes me think of the brief time that I would watch Dragon Ball Z cartoons. They had this thing (hyperbolic time chamber [they exist in real life but aren’t as cool]) that people could go into and train for like 10 years but only being gone for a day (not sure on the ratio but you get the idea). And i thought to myself, what the heck? that would be so boring… i mean after the 10 years i could get huge muscles but that time would have to be intense and i would have to be dedicated to my goal, which brings me to mentioning addressing your point.
I think that you would just really need to be passionate if you wanted to walk for a few thousand miles, and you probably need to because you can’t stop or “turn off your powers” in the middle (or any part for that matter) of the ocean.
I’ll probably be kept up over this post conor i hope you are happy. but first let me add a little side note, if the world is running at a constant time and lets choose the Flash for this hypothetical (because i think he’s pretty cool), wouldn’t the air be at the earths speed? how does it get out of his way? wouldn’t it be like running in a wall of Jello? I haven’t understood the vibrating wall idea but the Flash would need to push the air out of his way right? sorta like trudging through snow?
I’ve never actually tohught about it in these terms. To me this has always just been the way it’s most presentable. All of the heroes are moving fast in a normal world. In Smallville, or any time it happens in comics, I’ve always thought of that as just their way of showing us how fast they’re moving. “look, they’ve moved across the field, and that drop of rain hasn’t even had time to hit the ground”. And obviously, when moving at such speeds you have to be able to keep up. Moving across the world in a few seconds you’re bound to run into something unless of course your brain can keep up. When your brain can keep up, you’re able to process the speed things are moving in relativity to your speed, which would obviously look fairly slow. That’s what I assumed Lana, and the countless other heroes to make the same comment, meant. “It’s so weird going so fast because everything appears to be going slow around you. It’s like driving in a car. The car doesn’t appear to be moving, but everything is speeding around it. This is the reverse. At least, that’s the way I’ve always taken it.