When I was growing up, I loved to read comic books about Superman, Batman, Spiderman and just about any superhero I could get my hands on. I couldn’t stop reading about the adventures of beings with superpowers that used those powers to help common people they had never even met before. I was hooked at a young age and it had a great effect on opening my imagination and giving me an open mind to new ideas, even ones that go beyond what could actually happen in real life. I knew even at a young age that most of what I was reading was impossible but it still entertained me and left me with the question, “what if?”
Now that I am older, I can look at comic book heroes and use science to prove that many of my boyhood heroes could not exist in our world any more than Santa Claus could exist. Take Superman himself as an example.
When Superman was originally created back in the 1930’s, he was far less powerful than he is today. In fact, if you stretched your imagination enough, it was just possible for that Superman to exist in our reality of today! You see, the original Superman came from a planet, Krypton, which had higher levels of gravity than those of Earth. With this extra gravity, stronger bones and muscles were needed to survive on such a world, so when Superman was sent to a planet with lower gravity, in this case Earth, he was much stronger than any human. He was also able to jump farther into the air and had tougher skin, so he was super-human, hence the name, “Superman”. Think of it like humans going to the Moon. Astronauts were able to jump much, much higher and move things that on Earth would have been impossible to move because the Moon has such a weaker gravity than the Earth. This is all the original Superman was, an astronaut from another planet!
What happened to Superman slowly over the years is that comic book writers let their imaginations loose and decided that if he could jump really high, than why not fly? If he could fly, he would need really good vision and this eventually became x-ray vision. If he had x-ray vision, why not heat vision? If he could make something hot, than why not be able to cool things down with powerful lungs? His strength that originally was only slightly more powerful than a few men, morphed into a strength that was so great he could lift mountains. So, while the original Superman was at least within the range of possibility for being a creature that could live in our reality, the modern Superman has become a god and cannot, as we know science today, exist in our reality.
Another good example of a hero that couldn’t possibly exist in our reality is the Hulk. The Hulk in the comic books is just a man who can transform himself into a large green monster that gets more powerful as it gets angry. Now this has problems from the beginning. The gamma radiation that the Hulk uses would either kill the man or give him cancer. Secondly, the cells in a body cannot transform that quickly from human to monster. Third, the Hulk is much more massive than the man he originally comes from, Dr. Bruce Banner. Where does that extra mass come from? If I remember correctly, mass cannot be created or destroyed, so how does a meek man put on hundreds of pounds of muscle in a few minutes? Not possible.
Then there is Spiderman. Bitten by a radioactive spider, he gets all the positives out of being a human-spider hybrid but none of the disadvantages. He doesn’t get compound eyes or extra legs or shoot webs from his abdomen or have a lot of extra hair all over his body. The “Spidey-Sense” that warns him from danger is based on Spiderman’s creator seeing that spiders have an unnatural sense of knowing when someone is going to step on them. Scientists have figured out how spiders do this and it has to do with the sudden change in air pressure that they can feel through the extra hairs on their bodies. Once they feel this sudden change in air pressure caused by a foot coming towards them, they run away through instinct. Alas, it is not a superpower that spiders have, it is something science can explain.
The most human superheroes, that is, superheroes without superpowers have the most likelihood of being able to exist in our reality, yet they have problems too.
I remember reading Batman and wondering at all the weird things that would happen that make Batman look good but would be impossible to happen in real life. For example, I remember reading several comic books where Batman would jump from rooftop to rooftop, often going down several stories and then landing on his feet or doing a tuck and roll. I tried jumping down several stories as a kid and trust me, you can’t do it without getting hurt. Perhaps if it was two or three stories that he jumped down then Batman wouldn’t have a problem but more than that and injuries happen. Then there is always the utility belt that has everything you could possibly want plus an unlimited amount of “Bat-a-rangs”. The pouches that are on that belt are too small to contain everything he uses plus the modern Batman seems to have a special gun that can fire rope that will attach to anything he shoots it at. It apparently is in his belt under his cape but you don’t see that gun when he is swinging around or fighting bad guys and his cape is in mid-air. Strange. It is almost as if the gun magically appears and disappears.
In addition to this, Batman always seems to be at the right place at the right time. If Gotham is anything like New York City in real life (and that is what many comic book writers have said) then it is a huge place and he can’t just hop into the Batmobile and find bad guys doing bad things as easily as he seems to do it in the comic books. Then there is the wear and tear that living that type of life would do to a body. Major league athletes in football can only sustain a full contact lifestyle until they are in their thirties and they only play for a few hours a week and only for part of the year, not every night like a Batman would. No, I am afraid that living like the Batman would cause the person to have to quit that lifestyle after 5 or maybe 10 years. Then they would have to live with the injuries, arthritis and crippling physical and mental pain for the rest of their life. I don’t know if anyone would or could do that.
Anyways, I just wanted to touch on the science behind superheroes and why they don’t and can’t exist in our everyday lives. While these characters are wonderful to read about and make some people aspire to something better, there is no scientific basis for any of these characters to exist in our world which has many more rule than in the minds of a comic book writer’s imagination.
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